After all the leaks about Narrabri and Twiggy's gas pipeline, Perry Williams nailed this in The Australian on 4 June (I have emailed him about permissions etc but this is urgent - and it's fine work) - NB I'd like to "stretch" the Government over a barrel over this mess which is harming Australia and betraying the legacies of great past Heroes:
National COVID-19 Coordination Commission chair Nev Power said a leaked report pushing for the government to subsidise cheap gas to turbocharge manufacturing did not reflect the views of the Commission, but it remains open to public ownership of new pipelines.
A NCCC manufacturing taskforce chaired by former Dow boss Andrew Liveris recommended the federal government guarantee gas volumes, open new fields and build pipelines to halve the price of the fossil fuel to a $4 a gigajoule target.
“The leaked report doesn’t reflect the views of the Commission,” Mr Power told the Senate’s COVID-19 Committee.
“It was an interim report and I can’t recall whether we’d seen it at all or whether it was in very early draft or presentation when we saw it.”
A final report has now been submitted to the government and while wide-scale subsidies are not being considered, the Commission does support government backing for gas infrastructure such as pipelines.
“The Commission is not recommending any subsidised delivery of gas or any other energy system. But we have talked about the provision of infrastructure to reduce the cost of transportation and deliver lower cost.”
The NCCC was also quizzed over its support for Santos’ $3.6bn controversial Narrabri coal seam gas project in NSW which is awaiting approvals from state planning authorities.
“I think it was included in the report. I can’t remember the details around that. It was one of a number of projects mentioned in the report,” Mr Power said.
“The predominant focus was on infrastructure to reduce the cost of transportation as opposed to supply, but there was a wide range of sources that were canvassed in that. That included infrastructure which could have dual purpose for providing transportation of gas into the network generally and specific projects.”
The draft proposals recommending $4 gas have sparked a battle between users and producers who remain at odds over the feasibility of delivering supplies at much cheaper rates than currently in the market.
Backlash
The backlash on the feasibility of cheaper gas prices on Australia’s east coast from producers including Shell, Origin Energy and Santos had been noted by the NCCC.
“It’d be fair to say there are a number of gas companies that don’t believe it’s a good thing and probably would not benefit from it and they’ve been quite strident in saying that the sorts of gas prices we’re setting as targets are not achievable,” Mr Power told the Senate’s COVID-19 Committee.
“I think if nothing else we’ve created a very robust debate across the industry with the objective of trying to identify opportunities to reduce the gas price and benefit everybody in the short term and also provide the foundation to expand and develop manufacturing industries that rely on gas as a raw material.”
The NCCC said it was important to set strong “stretch targets” for more affordable gas.
“The benefits of lower gas prices to me are very broad. There are some people that probably see that as unachievable but I believe we should be setting strong stretch targets that are going to benefit the Australian households and businesses broadly.”
NB This topic is outside the NCCC's terms of reference of "in the next few months" and stimulus per se. iA has a role and it needs to be booted into a professional mode as its Priority List is blaumange.