The package of possibilities the Morrison government has flagged to the gas industry is potentially the most positive step towards a cogent energy policy that has been presented to the nation in a decade.

Even the most retrograde, complex and systemically risky of the options offered – the creation of a national gas reservation scheme – lands with boundaries that are appropriately protective and reflect, to some degree, the underlying risk-return prerequisites of an industry that invests on multi-decade return horizons.