THERE is no doubt Australian governments over the years, at state and federal level, have made a mess of our national energy policies, and the Australian public has paid the price for that.
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We are a country blessed with the resources to produce energy – abundant fossil fuels such as coal and gas and abundant renewables like solar and wind. But somehow that abundance has not translated into sensible policies to both ensure the best use of those resources to benefit the community and protect the environment.
Certainly many businesses have paid the price for the political stalemates and stupidities that leave us at the end of 2018, with federal and state politicians still fighting about who has been most responsible for our inability to respond to climate change with a credible national energy policy that also curbs rising costs.
Weston Aluminium managing director Garbis Simonian says his 2009 approved plan for a gas pipeline linking Queensland’s Galilee Basin gas fields, the controversial proposed Narrabri gas field project and the Hunter, is a response to that political stalemate, and the need for cheaper, secure gas in the region.
But his recent application to have that plan renewed for another five years, after a decade of not starting work on the project, has run into strong opposition from community and environment groups.
A gas pipeline over more than 850 kilometres from the Galilee Basin to Newcastle might have been approved, if controversially, in 2009, but a lot has changed on the climate change front since then.
Mr Simonian’s arguments about governments exporting Australian gas to the detriment of Australian users are on very solid ground. His description of gas as the “moderate” energy resource between coal and renewables is also seen as reasonable under some circumstances. But his solution – running a very large pipe across two states and relying on decade-old environmental conditions to do so – was never likely to pass unnoticed.
There is strong opposition to development of the Narrabri coal seam gas field project, and Australians in 2018 hear the words “Galilee Basin” and are immediately reminded of the controversial Adani coal mine project in that region of Queensland. A decade of delay might prove very costly.
Issue: 39,089.
