The sudden rise in energy prices in Australia is not in itself a crisis worse than in other countries such as the United Kingdom, where a staggering Boris Johnson recently enacted a tax on extraordinary profits for major energy companies as response to price increases. What really hurts, even before the pain comes home completely, is that we are doing it to ourselves.
The problem is not that Australia does not have enough gas; the problem is that we are the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world, with multinational companies sending the majority to the Asian market and selling more than a third. in a short-term market in bubbles and for spot contracts.
Short-term supply problems in the Australian market, such as coal-fired power plants that are shrinking capacity for reasons that remain somewhat opaque, have been exacerbated by consumers failing to take advantage of the huge LNG export channel Australian targeting lucrative foreign markets.
The war in Ukraine is the immediate trigger for the restriction of world supply, but as the world economy overcomes the pandemic and demand and energy prices soar, the “gas-driven recovery” Australia seems to offer few benefits to those who are at home.
“What nine years of coalition government has done … is a kind of engineering of this vulnerability to a gas supply crisis by handing over the keys to public policy to exporters.”
In most parts of the country, prices have risen during a prolonged cold spell and would have surpassed $ 40 per gigajoule without being restricted by the Australian energy market operator last week. The exception is in Western Australia, where it has also been cold this week, but gas prices have remained stable at around $ 6 a gigajoule thanks to the previous Labor government’s decision to set aside 15 per cent of LNG. sold for the domestic market.
The architect of this legislation was former Washington Prime Minister Alan Carpenter, who last week compared nine years of critical failure of Federal Coalition policy to walking “in the middle of the road with a bandage on the eyes “.
“The domestic gas supply was and is the obvious answer to the gas supply problem,” Carpenter told The Saturday Paper. “There is a lot of gas on the east coast, but it is being exported. And most importantly, gas is not the long-term future, it is renewables.”
Carpenter’s successor, Colin Barnett, this week called for a gas pipeline across the country to connect the east coast with an additional supply of gas to the west, but former WA Green Senator Scott Ludlam suggests that this should not be the case. is the point. “Arguing the domestic gas reserve or the activators or any of these businesses dodges the real question, how quickly can we get the gas out of the grid?” he told The Saturday Paper.
He says the supply shock is not surprising given that major players in the local energy market have pushed domestic gas prices into the spiral of international demand. “This has been done deliberately by gas producers to raise domestic prices,” he says. “It’s not like they did it by mistake. That’s the system they designed.”
National leader David Littleproud has repeatedly suggested that the new government should “pick up the phone and talk to the gas companies.” For Ludlam, however, the infiltration of the two major parts by the gas industry is a big part of the problem.
“Donations flow roughly in both directions and last for a long time,” he says. “What nine years of coalition government has done … is a kind of engineering of this vulnerability to a gas supply crisis by handing over the keys to public policy to exporters.”
Ludlam says the imperative is for states, territories and the Commonwealth to facilitate a “very, very fast” transition to renewable energy. “If the answer to what is happening on the east coast right now is more oil and gas, then we have misunderstood the question.”
This is the second part of the energy crisis. It’s not just the supply issues, created in large part while Angus Taylor was minister; is the fact that both sides still believe that more fossil fuels are the answer. Investment in renewable energy has been thwarted by government indifference and therefore there is no source of fuel that can alleviate the current market.
In WA, which effectively handed over the majority federal government to Labor last month with a 10% four-seat statewide change, Prime Minister Mark McGowan is firmly committed to the Woodside Scarborough gas project. the highest profile of over 100 new fossil fuel projects in the post. -Electoral channel at the national level.
Last November, McGowan threatened to legislate on a challenge to Scarborough’s approvals to the WA Supreme Court, saying at the time, “We want to keep the lights on and make sure our hospitals continue to operate.” WA remains the only state in the country whose emissions continue to rise and has failed to set a firm goal of reducing emissions. Hospitals are not doing well either.
McGowan’s position outraged former Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation president Raelene Cooper, a Mardudhunera custodian with cultural authority in Murujuga, also known as the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region, where Scarborough gas will land. to be processed.
“How dare he use his power to make such a statement? He is not above the law, nor are these big companies,” he told The Saturday Paper.
Murujuga is one of the oldest and largest rock art sites on the planet, nominated on the UNESCO World Heritage List for more than one million petroglyphs that, according to researchers and custodians, are threatened by industrial emissions. close. “It’s a place of healing and a place of union and spiritual essence,” Cooper says. “It’s really phenomenal.”
Cooper is one of 27 elders and custodians in Murujuga who signed an open letter to the WA parliament in March calling for the lifting of what they describe as “gag orders” in Burrup’s industrial agreement signed with the government. state two decades ago.
“We have a right to speak on behalf of this country,” Cooper says. “It’s our beliefs. It’s our church and our parliament out there.”
Greens leader Adam Bandt told The Saturday Paper that the Albanian government could stop Scarborough if it wanted to, and said the Greens would support legislation to prevent new coal and gas projects.
“By supporting massive projects like Scarborough, the new government is not listening to what the public has just said in the election,” Bandt said.
WA’s shift to federal Labor, which superficially resembled the landslide of the McGowan pandemic election in March 2021, was facilitated by the fact that there was only one independent teal in the state. Kate Chaney, whose father Michael was president of Woodside until 2018, has refused to be drawn to his position at Scarborough and other new fossil fuel projects since he ousted the Liberal incumbent in the United States. Curtin’s former safe house.
On a post-campaign visit to Perth last weekend, Anthony Albanese interrupted an event with Labor volunteers after he was surprised by protesters opposing Scarborough. Days earlier, Resources Minister Madeleine King had declared “absolute” Labor support for Scarborough, which is expected to emit more than a billion tonnes of carbon by 2050.
Bill Hare, executive director of the research firm Climate Analytics and former lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, noted that this would add about 7% to Australia’s annual emissions baseline on 2030.
He told The Saturday Paper that Scarborough would significantly increase the mitigation burden needed to meet Labor’s 43% emissions reduction target. “So if all these emissions were to occur and not be reduced, then the effective reduction needed to achieve a 43% reduction, including these emissions, would be around 50-52%,” Hare said.
Woodside says Scarborough has all the necessary “primary” approvals and that “execution” is underway. “Major civil works have begun for the construction of the housing village and construction of the Scarborough Pipeline has begun,” a spokesman said.
Hare and others say it’s premature to state, like McGowan recently, that Scarborough has all the approvals he needs. “The big gap in the assessment is that there has been no assessment of the impacts of Aboriginal cultural heritage,” Hare said.
“It’s wrong to think Scarborough is a deal,” agreed Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s chief energy transition chief Jess Panegyres. “At this time, there are still regulatory and legal avenues to stop Scarborough, including the NOPSEMA approval process, which pose significant obstacles for Woodside.”
NOPSEMA, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, is the independent regulator for the safety and environmental management of offshore oil projects in Commonwealth waters. In response to inquiries from The Saturday Paper, NOPSEMA confirmed that Woodside still needed several approvals for specific parts of the project that will run the pipeline nearly 400 miles off the north-west coast of WA to Scarborough Field.
“So far, Woodside has only received approval for the Scarborough Operations Project Plan,” a NOPSEMA spokesman said, adding that Woodside had already submitted three environmental plans under assessment, with more needed.
“The cultural characteristics of the environment are part of the definition of ‘environment’ … As such, each environmental plan must address impacts on cultural characteristics and identify appropriate management strategies.”
This means that Woodside will have to consult with traditional custodians, such as Raelene Cooper, who have a cultural connection and obligations to Murujuga. The Saturday Paper has seen a letter to Woodside from Cooper and another custodian, Kuruma Mardudhunera’s wife, Josie Alec, asking for consultation …