Session 14. Oral Presentation for: Australia’s gas markets: similar problems…similar solutions?

Presented on Wednesday 22 May: Session 14 Declining supply and entrenched demand in all three of Australia’s domestic gas markets – the East Coast, Western Australia (WA) and the Northern Territory (NT) – is creating similar issues. We tend to think of these as essentially separate, disconnected and divided by vast swathes of land. But the reality is that scarce local supply has been sanctioned in all three markets – despite around 16 tcf being sanctioned for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG) – and domestic demand remains resilient, as per both Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and Wood Mackenzie forecasts. Starting with the largest, the increasingly tight East Coast market continues to hit headlines as it deals with supply crises, government interventions and new regulations. Undersupplied, underinvested and underexplored, it is also divided by activism and state and federal politics. Traditionally more sedate, the WA market has slowly drifted in a similar direction. New forecasts highlighting potential gas shortages have sparked more state intervention in the market, including banning LNG exports by certain suppliers. The NT market might be the smallest, but it’s ahead of the curve, already experiencing emergency upstream shortages that sparked increased domestic supply from LNG exporters. While there is a less diverse range of supply sources in the NT, the answer to current shortages matches the options currently being looked at by regulators on both coasts. To access the Oral Presentation click the link on the right. To read the full paper click here