Time to tell the truth on gas and solve the east coast shortage

It’s time for Daniel Westerman, the chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator organisation, to take the necessary simple steps to solve Australia’s east coast gas shortage.

With federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen now declaring gas will be an essential part of Australia’s future energy mix, for Westerman to simply declare we have a looming gas shortage does not help.

And it also happens to be wrong. We have plenty of cheap low gas available that does not require fracking and has the potential to have no or low net emissions.

Westerman claims on the Australian Energy Market Operator’s website: “We’re actively driving and planning for Australia’s energy future, making sure that Australians will continue to have access to secure and reliable energy in the years to come.

“We also assess, and plan for, the impact that operational changes will have on the system, such as planned outages, the connection of new generators and gas supply levels … We’re shaping a better energy future for all Australians.”

Unless Westerman discovers and reveals that there are substantial reserves of gas that are not being disclosed then he simply can’t perform the tasks he accepted when he took the top job. It’s time to tell the truth.

So his first step must be to demand that the Victorian government release its concealed report on Victoria’s immense gas reserves that was prepared by one of the world’s biggest and best gas reserve estimators MHA Petroleum Consultants, now part of the giant Sproule group.

The Victorian government has taken the MHA report down from their websites and I suspect they will tell Westerman to “jump in the lake” because they don’t want to develop the gas.

Westerman could apply for freedom of information but I have a simpler solution.

Mr Westerman, give me a call and I will provide you with the MHA reserve estimates. (I don’t have the detailed MHA workings.)

Victorian Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio. The Victorian government must release its concealed report on the state’s immense gas reserves. Picture: Andrew Henshaw/NCA NewsWire

From my material, Westerman can discover that MHA calculated Victoria gas reserves at 4.996 trillion cubic feet of gas.

That’s some 60 per cent of the last 50 years of Bass Strait production. Better still, there was a “high” estimate of reserves at 12.6234 Tcf which would make the Victorian reserves second only to the North West Shelf.

Lakes Oil also has onshore gas reserves. MHA reveals its estimated onshore gas reserves are right next to the Sale treatment plant and the national pipeline.

Additional documentation, also being kept secret by the Victorian government but if which I have a copy, shows that not only does the gas not require fracking, but it comes up with fresh irrigation-quality water from very deep aquifers, well away from farm water. The water could be used to irrigate the sandy Gippsland coastal rain-shadow country and generate sufficient soil carbon credits to offset all the emissions from the use of the gas.

To my knowledge no other country in the world has gas where the carbon can be immediately neutralised at low cost.

The additional “secret” material states that some six wells need to be drilled to make sure that the initial permeability is maintained. They will take about 20 weeks. Victoria is keeping this gas secret because it fears that if it proposes a gas development then the ALP will lose Green seats.

As my regular readers know, to help in the concealment former premier Daniel Andrews spent $42m to ask a committee to determine if there was any onshore gas in Victoria but he carefully blocked out where the gas was and instructed the committee members that they were not to look at the areas containing the huge gas reserves.

The committee accepted the $42m and acted as instructed and reported “no gas”.

Two other recent events make the task of Westerman to demand proper information from Victorian government a lot easier.

The first, the new attitude of a commonwealth energy minister in relation to gas and, second, a fascinating report in The Australian by Rachel Baxendale showing Victorian voters are more inclined than those in other states to believe there is a strong possibility of blackouts in the transition to net zero, that energy costs are higher, and that gas has a role to play.

Victorian Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio has publicly disagreed on multiple occasions with her federal resources counterpart Madeleine King over the role of gas in the energy transition.

Despite this, the Redbridge EnergyShift tracking poll conducted in May, shows Victorian voters have “strongly negative assessments and expectations of the transition process and are rejecting the minister’s claims about reliability and affordability”.

Westerman now has the political environment to do his job and demand the Victorian government tell the truth about their magnificent low-to-nil net carbon gas.

It also might assist the Victorian budget and may relieve the crazy taxes the Victorian population faces because of the need for the ALP to keep Green seats. And it may help wake up the local media.