Everybody has lost money on East Coast gas

There’s just nothing good about it. Literally nothing. Everybody has lost money. IEEFA with the report.

Queensland marked 10 years as an LNG exporter in January 2025, and has emerged as a key supplier of LNG, primarily to China. Besides boosting Australia’s energy trade with Asia’s largest economy, the industry has left a legacy of higher domestic gas prices, weaker domestic gas demand, lower than expected state royalty payments and poor financial returns for investors.

In the decade since Queensland started exporting LNG, domestic gas prices have tripled due to the stronger linkage between LNG export prices and domestic gas prices. According to the RBA, prices are likely to remain higher than pre-2015 levels for decades to come.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.