Gottliebsen: Time to get tough on gas crisis

The time for treating the rogue state governments of NSW and Victoria with kid gloves is over.

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

The time for treating the rogue state governments of NSW and Victoria with kid gloves is over.

The Coalition parties in NSW and Victoria are as disastrous as the ALP so it’s not a question of party politics but rather of teaching voters in both NSW and Victoria that there are consequences for electing incompetent politicians interested only in getting votes rather than acting in their states’ interest.

And with that vote gathering there has been statements from some politicians about energy that can at the very best described as misleading but more accurately deliberate lies. The state politicians have played a big role in both the huge hike in power prices and the looming gas shortages. We have an act of parliament that jails politicians if they make misleading statements.

Its time for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rise above party politics and to at least threaten to invoke the 1995 law against some of the vandalistic Coalition and ALP current and former politicians. Meanwhile the state politicians need to go into families’ homes and see for themselves the devastation their acts of energy vandalism in both gas and electricity have caused to household bills.

I must add that the gas crisis was also caused by bad behaviour from the Gladstone Three (the Santos Shell and Origin LNG consortiums) and so if they do not voluntarily direct sufficient gas to the south at a reasonable price then Malcolm Turnbull must give the them stick with severe export clamps and other penalties. No western democracy can allow severe shortage of a product like gas while it is being exported. .

But today its about politicians and to show the incredible incompetence of NSW and Victorian state politicians I will start with the events at The King’s School Sydney, because the NSW crisis was partly about continuing a dispute on the schoolboy rugby field — that’s how stupid it has become in our largest state.

And then we will go to gas rich Victoria where Esso knew there was a problem coming in Bass Strait and acted to secure the abundant extra supplies but was blocked by the Coalition and ALP politicians who didn’t care a tinker about jobs and household bills — in Victoria its all about green votes and false farmer scare campaigns.

First to NSW. I detailed the key role of The King’s School in April. Santos may have “shorted” gas from Queensland by exporting gas that was not obtainable but it believed it had the vast reserves of Narrabri ready to develop. But the Greens and the Bishop farming family on the Liverpool Plains opposed this.

In 1974 Jamie Bishop was The King’s School captain and the captain of the first XV that won the Greater Public Schools rugby premiership. Coach of that team was Alan Jones who went into be a great coach of the Wallabies and the dominant radio commentator in Sydney.

On the King’s rugby field in the 1970’s Jones fell out with a schoolboy John Anderson, the elder son of another great Liverpool Plains family.

John Anderson went in to be deputy Prime Minster and when he left politics he became chairman of the major stakeholder in Narrabri gas, which was later acquired by Santos.

Jones and Bishop teamed up once but this time on radio. The subject was gas not rugby and while there is no doubt they believed in the anti gas cause the attacks on Anderson were personal.

The NSW government recognised the power of King’s and Jones and stood idly by and Narrabri was blocked. Now there is a new proposal where the pipeline stays away from the Bishop’s farm and it uses unfracked gas. Malcolm Turnbull government should require the NSW parliament to pass emergency legislation to rush the development of Narrabri.

Now to Victoria where a number of companies have vast reserves of gas that do not require fracking. One is Lakes Oil and another is Ignite Energy Resources Ltd

Exxon signed a $100m initial development contract with the Ignite Energy (via its subsidiary Gippsland Gas) but the Victorian Coalition government in 2012 blocked the deal because they thought drilling might upset farmers and they did not understand the magnitude of the looming gas crisis.

When the Andrews government embraced a similar policy, Exxon walked away with the non-binding indication that they would return if the Victorian Coalition and the ALP were interested in solving the gas shortages.

I emphasise that not until the $100m is spent testing and evaluating the immense field will the project be ready for commercial development. But Exxon’s preliminary estimates were that the water in the so-called lignite sponges contained 9 trillion cubic feet of gas, roughly equal to the amount of gas in Bass Strait.

Lignite is like sponge and is 70 per cent water. It is nothing like black coal, which requires fracking to release its gas, as used in Queensland.

The water laden lignite sponge is 450 metres to 1.2 kilometres deep (much lower than the water tables used in farming).

Voters need to understand that there is a penalty for voting in rogue state governments. It may be time in state politics for parties to arise from either the left or the right side of politics that have the interests of the population as their first priority.