Anything that doesn’t like the LNP, The Guardian loves. End of point of view.
Bruce Mountain and his advisory board should know better.
A leading energy expert has warned the Coalition’s plan to charge gas exporters a levy to force them to sell more to the domestic market could backfire and force local prices up instead of down.
…While several experts and the gas industry said the policy was light on detail, the report revealed the Coalition intended to impose a levy on gas that was not tied to long-term export contracts. That levy would make it uneconomical for producers to sell that gas overseas.
Producers would also be told how much gas they should sell domestically; if they met the target, they would have the levy refunded.
Prof Bruce Mountain, director of the Victorian Energy Policy Centre, said: “There is a non-trivial possibility here that if [the Coalition] constrains exports in this way, local prices will rise because the gas producers will choose not to produce gas.”
Jeez, mate, get out of your ivory tower. What do you think is going on here?
Of course the cartel will attempt to slow production to bully the nation, but that’s what the levy is about. It is counter-bullying to prevent it.
If production is cut, Dutton can just raise the levy. If the producers eventually want to default on export contracts, that’s up to them. Who cares!
Simply pointing out that we might get bullied by a cartel in a former market that failed ten years ago is not contemporaneous analysis. We know it is a cartel. That’s what the policy is designed to break.
This is lazy, cloudy and laggy thinking.
Not to mention corrupt. Enter, you guessed it, gas cartel-sponsored Tony Wood.
Tony Wood, the director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program who previously worked in the gas industry, said the policy was “hugely interventionist” and could have unintended consequences.
Unintended consequences like the formation of a gas export cartel that Tony Wood recommended in 2013, which has since gutted household income, destroyed the energy transition, and killed five prime ministers?
And where’s the analysis of the counterfactual? Without more local gas, we will have to import LNG. The Australian.
Victorian has sought a national rule change for gas storage to help avoid a “system black” outage that could cripple households and business, risking a potential $1.6bn economic hit.
State Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio has written to the national rule-maker asking for a three-year extension to the gas rules to allow the Australian Energy Market Operator to continue tapping into the Dandenong LNG storage facility to sidestep a gas squeeze.
With steep gas declines from Victoria’s ageing Bass Strait, supply shortages are set to hit during peak winter demand with industrial users in the southern states most exposed. Accessing the LNG reserve would boost the power grid operator’s ability to avoid the small risk of a “system black-type event” and avert the potential curtailment of the gas market, according to the request.
What does that look like for energy prices?
According to Asian gas futures, this.
The Guardian is literally campaigning for the destruction of Australian households because, I guess, ‘racist’.
The paper is intellectually bankrupt.
