Review launched into widespread power outage as government backs gas supply
Faults in a contractor’s pipeline have been blamed for widespread power outages on Monday, but the CLP says the government has ‘failed to do the basics’.
Politics
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A major power outage on Monday evening was not an issue with gas reserves, the government says, but answers on exactly what went wrong – and whether it could happen again – may not be known for months.
The blackout affected 19 suburbs and 20,000 customers along the Darwin to Katherine grid when a pipeline fault led to a localised loss of gas supply to the Channel Island Power Station, Power and Water confirmed.
“We get gas supply to the power station in large pipes, and then from those large pipes it goes through a series of valves and pressure stations to get into the power station – it’s somewhere in there the issue has occurred and stopped the supply to the generators,” executive general manager Michael Besselink said.
Mr Besselink said he was aware of improvements that could be made to the system, but until the findings of a government review came back – expected within three months – it was not possible to pinpoint the cause or whether it could mean further issues in the future.
Like Western Australia, the Territory is powered off its own grid – it is not connected to the National Energy Market that links all other states and the ACT.
About three quarters of the Territory’s power comes from natural gas, usually supplied from ENI’s Blacktip gas field as part of a 25-year agreement signed in 2006.
However the government has been forced to turn to other suppliers in recent years as Blacktip struggled to meet demand.
The additional supplies include gas from Santos’ Bayu-Undan field, which was reported to have emptied at the end of last year.
The NT is the only Australian jurisdiction that exports LNG without a domestic gas reservation policy, but Environment Minister Kate Worden said Monday’s blackout was not an issue with gas availability.
“I’m very confident that we have enough gas and other sources of power within our system,” she said.
Ms Worden said sourcing gas from Santos’ proposed Beetaloo project would be “ideal”.
Until final approvals are met, however, Santos has strongly rejected any gas development.
The government had “invested millions of dollars” into improving the Territory grid, Ms Worden said, laying blame for the outage with pipeline infrastructure company APA, who are contracted by Power and Water.
“This issue is not with our infrastructure, which we are modernising and updating every single day … what we’ve seen now is a failure by a third party supplier,” she said.
Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said the blackout showed the government was “unable to do the basics”.
“It cannot keep the lights on and the reason for this is because of their fiscal mismanagement and gross incompetence,” she said.
“The irony is the Territory is rich in on and offshore gas, we have an opportunity to not only provide power for ourselves, but for our entire nation and our partners in the region, and yet here in the Territory we can’t even keep the lights on for 250,000 people.”
She said the CLP’s focus to secure power supply was on improving business certainty and encouraging investment through regulatory reform, streamlining processes and fast tracking major projects.
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