INDICATIONS of federal support for controversial offshore gas drilling near Newcastle can be seen as the latest growth spurt of a Hydra-headed energy policy trying to serve two masters, and ultimately satisfying neither.
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On the one hand, Canberra has little choice, politically - and, in the eyes of many voters, morally - but to play its part in the global push to reduce atmospheric and ocean carbon dioxide levels by minimising the use of fossil fuels.
On the other, it has a first-order responsibility to ensure the nation has viable forms of energy security: and that means secure supplies of gas and oil, as well as an electricity grid that can handle ever-increasing volumes of intermittent wind and solar power while still needing baseload power stations to keep the lights on around the clock.
This is just a snapshot of the complexity.
It is no easy task.
And its a task made all the harder, thanks to a rapid expansion of the gas industry, to the point where we now vie with Qatar in the Middle East for the title of the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
Australia formally becomes world's #1 LNG exporter in 2019 (with a) record 77.514 million tonne, edging out former No 1 Qatar. Australian exports were more than twice the US, the other fast-growing LNG producer.
- EnergyQuest, January 2020
At the same time, domestic gas is so expensive, and in such short supply, that Canberra is looking at offshore east coast gas drilling, or the fracking of the environmentally sensitive Pilbara, as the answer to industry's concerns.
The other alternative - as illogical as it seems, given Australia exported more than 77 million tonnes or 107 billion cubic metres of LNG in 2019 - is to import gas through either Newcastle or Port Kembla.
Industry lobby groups have complained for years that NSW is chronically short of gas: one widely quoted statistic is that 98 per cent of the state's gas needs come from elsewhere.
The political desire to reactivate a domestic industry is understandable, especially when the resultant gas can be reasonably said to have sustained existing jobs, or helped create new ones.
But the farther we go along the environmental path, the greater the emphasis that will be put on the negative impacts of gas extraction, whether it is onshore fracking of coal seams, or the drilling of undersea basins.
Traditionally, the seabed off Newcastle was seen as having little potential for gas.
But energy booms can make marginal prospects financially viable, and politically saleable on the grounds that "anything is better than coal".
This debate has some way to travel yet.
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IN THE NEWS:
Ian Kirkwood
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
