Get serious about gas or fall behind, Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill warns Albanese gas review

Get behind gas or watch foreign capital shun Australia, the chief executive of Woodside has warned Labor. Meg O’Neill queried Australia’s future as a world leader in energy production as LNG policy settings are rewritten.

Australia’s appeal as a destination for global capital will crumble unless the government moves quickly to accelerate gas project approvals and provide long-term policy certainty, Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill has warned.

She told Canberra to “get serious” about the fuel that underpins the nation’s energy system.

Ms O’Neill made a pointed intervention in claiming Australia had slipped behind the United States, Canada and Qatar as investors funnel money into jurisdictions with clearer rules and faster pathways for new development. While she acknowledged signs the Albanese government is trying to stabilise market settings after years of erratic action, confidence would not return until the policy environment became durable and predictable, she predicted.

“Australia must recommit to being a trusted partner and competitive destination for energy investment,” she said. “We are losing out to the US, Qatar and Canada as countries race to secure new gas supply and underwrite energy security through the 2030s.”

She pointed to a global surge in demand for long-term gas supply as artificial intelligence accelerates electricity consumption across Asia, and as the energy-intensive data centres enabling AI proliferate in developed economies. That demand, she said, is reshaping investment decisions at a moment when Australia risks being left behind.

Her comments speak to a long-running friction between the gas industry and the federal government, which has leaned on emergency market interventions to shield households from high prices and maintain east coast supply.

The industry argues those measures — including a mandatory price cap, code of conduct and the threat of export controls — spooked international capital and throttled new supply, despite Canberra’s assurances they were temporary.

Producers say they also had the reverse effect of project delays, investment deferrals and spurred increased uncertainty for long-term contracting with overseas customers. The government rejects the criticism, countering that intervention was necessary to protect manufacturers and the electorate from structural shortages and to ensure exporters contribute fairly to the domestic market.

Those competing narratives will collide when the federal government releases the findings of its east coast gas review, a defining moment for Labor’s energy policy. Labor is expected to tie the ability of the three east coast LNG exporters to continue to sell gas offshore with their domestic contributions.

That represents the most sweeping rewrite of the market’s operating rules in more than a decade. Central to that debate is Santos and its Gladstone LNG venture, the only one of Queensland’s three LNG exporters that does not produce enough gas to meet its long-term export commitments. Gladstone LNG has made up the shortfall by buying gas on the domestic market — a practice critics say has tightened local supply and driven up prices. Santos-backed Gladstone disagrees.

A form of east coast gas reservation is now seen as inevitable, with the scale of Gladstone LNG’s net contribution emerging as the most contentious detail. While parts of the industry concede they can live with a redesigned regime, they agree it must be paired with urgent action to bring new supply to market.

Ms O’Neill said she had seen tentative signs of progress from historically gas-hesitant states such as Victoria, but the pace was still far too slow.

“The decisions made in the near term will determine whether Australia can continue to provide reliable and affordable energy for all Australians and remain a world-leading energy producer,” she said.

Originally published as Get serious about gas or fall behind, Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill warns Albanese gas review