Environmental News 27.12.14 Part I: Queenslanders - We are now officially screwed! The gas boom (for the FOREIGN OWNERS) is underway and as domestic prices soar, our farmlands will disappear down a big, dark hole. We WERE warned. Well the gas BOOM has begun and Australia’s first shipment of CSG - now converted into liquefied natural gas (LNG) by QGC - is about to leave Curtis Island, off Gladstone, for its new home, Asia. QGC is the first of three consortia to begin LNG shipments from the island, with the other two companies - Origin Energys Australia Pacific LNG project and the Santos-led Gladstone LNG project - expected to begin production early next year and, together, the three Curtis Island plants will account for roughly 8% of global LNG production, with exports poised for countries such as China, Japan, Singapore and Chile. Professor of regional and economic development at Central Queensland University, John Rolfe, says the finalisation of the plants will provide substantial revenue for the Queensland Government BUT, he said, the exports will also increase the price of gas domestically. Essentially, gas in the eastern side of Australia has been pretty cheap by world standards.” He said. So now that those three plants are being built, suddenly the gas on the eastern side of Australia can be sold on the domestic market or it can be sold overseas... and that competition is going to push up – even TRIPLE - the prices of the domestic market.” Also, says The Australia Institute’s Mark Ogge, these gas exporters are overwhelmingly foreign-owned and include several huge Asian state-owned companies like Malaysias Petronas, Koreas Kogas, Petrochina and the China Petroleum Corporation, and, says Ogge, they will demand local industries compete with Asian customers for Australian gas. “In other words, the opening up of the LNG export industry in Queensland will deliver a windfall profit to the gas exporters at the expense of these other industries including the aluminium and chemical industries which account for about 85% cent of industrial gas consumption in Australia.” Ogge explained, adding that every dollar of additional profit to the gas exporters will be at the expense of Australian manufacturing and consumers and, if Australian manufacturers are not prepared to pay these prices, they wont get the gas. The Curtis Island development has also changed Gladstone – and not always in a good way – says mayor, Gail Sellers. “While development has brought more industry into the city, its also seen unprecedented increase in the cost of housing, road congestion and population growth.” She said. Buying a house or renting a house in the Gladstone region has more or less doubled and it has become so difficult for people who have lived here their whole lives that many have moved away.” Meanwhile, further west things are even more dire and, for example, a spiders web of roads join up the 6 400 active wells that have been drilled in Qld’s Surat Basin. “Coal seam gas tenements cover about 24 000 sq., km of the Queenslands Surat Basin, with much of that land used for agricultural purposes. Its the crossover of these two industries which has bought conflict to regional Queensland.” Says ABC Rural’s Zara Margolis. Oh and another 14 000 wells are planned across the state because, as the exporters say, the rising prices mean that MORE gas needs to be drilled so that WE, fellow Australians, can actually access OUR OWN GAS. “Having created the gas crisis, the gas exporters are attempting to deflect blame for the rising prices onto environmentalists - largely regional communities working to protect their groundwater, land, health and livelihoods from the rampant expansion of CSG.” Says Ogge. “This proposed cure assumes that the more gas is drilled, the more gas will be available for local consumers and the lower the prices. It ignores the simple fact the gas will still be part of the same gas market that covers all of Eastern Australia, which will be linked to global prices.” He said going on to explain that this increased drilling will mean the winding back of the most basic protections, such as the two kilometre exclusion zones that applies to CSG around residential areas in NSW. “In other words, no matter how much gas you drill - even if you could turn tens of thousands of square kilometres of NSW farmland into one huge industrial gas field - local users would still have to compete with international prices for the gas.” Wrote Ogge back in 2013. abc.net.au/news/2014-12-23/lng-milestone/5985532
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:50:24 +0000
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