Tell it to rack off. The AFR gas lobbyist.
Japanese energy groups have returned to one of their hobby horses: questioning the reliability of Australian LNG exporters.
In a feisty speech to the Future Energy Forum in Perth this week, a senior executive from power giant JERA warned that Australian companies’ preferred supplier status was at risk because of prohibitive environmental regulation and rising costs.
“The clock is ticking, and inaction could potentially cost Australia thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in lost revenue and weaken regional trade partnerships,” JERA senior vice president Hitoshi Nishizawa told industry leaders and government partners at the forum.
In the current set up of Australian gas exports on the east coast, multinational gas corporations sell Aussie gas to Asian countries without limit, consideration for the local market, or taxation (beyond paltry royalties in QLD).
By doing so, they have crashed Australian living standards as energy prices skyrocket for households and business, as well as hollowed out Australia’s industrial base to the point where it is on par with Luxembourg.
It has also all-but destroyed rationality and science in energy policymaking and played a key roll in the fall of five prime ministers.
Now, we could inhale on the toxic halitosis of this bloated Japanese gas Godzilla and worry about it failing to invest.
Or, we could add up the bill for the damage it has already done, which is FAR higher, and blithely push the fat, lumbering windbag into the sea.
Ironically, the relationship between the Japanese gas Godzilla and Australia would be far better if we just got on with doing the latter. The east coast gas catastrophe is not going away. Indeed it will get worse until fixed.
It would clear the decks for an east coast economic recovery while northern and western projects could be sanctioned for export. The perpetual threat of a gas crisis for both Australia and Japan would be eliminated.
But neither Godzilla nor his fearful Canberran victims appear unable to man-up enough to negotiate in good faith.
