Industry executives and analysts say Peter Dutton’s plan to have them direct more uncontracted gas away from international spot markets and into a low-price domestic reserve is flawed because there is no profit incentive to extract the extra gas.

While the producers’ long-term foundational contracts with Asian customers would be quarantined from the plan, between 50 and 100 petajoules of uncontracted gas that would have been sold on the spot LNG market must be redirected to east coast customers, increasing domestic supply by up to 20 per cent and bringing down gas and electricity bills.