Gas rich Northern Territory forced to source east coast gas to stop blackouts
Sitting between two of the world’s best gas fields, the Northern Territory has had to source out east coast gas. Read how.
The shambolic state of the Northern Territory’s energy sector has been laid bare in the Australian Energy Regulator’s latest State of the Energy Market report.
Released Thursday, the report showed ongoing supply uncertainty in the Territory forced the previous NT government to go cap-in-hand to interstate markets to secure east coast gas.
The AER report said ongoing production issues with the Blacktip field had forced the Territory to seek changes to Jemena’s $800m Northern Gas Pipeline to allow the reverse flow of gas back into the Northern Territory.
Under subject heading ‘Northern Gas Pipeline gas shortfall’, the AER report highlighted ongoing failures in the Territory’s system.
“As southern demand for gas from northern regions increases, supply previously provided to the east coast from the Northern Territory from 2019 has ceased,” the report found. “Production issues at the Blacktip offshore gas fields has led to the pipeline connection between Queensland and the Northern Territory being restricted.
“Demand on the Carpentaria Pipeline is now reliant on gas supplies from southeast Queensland to fuel industrial demand in the north-west of the state. Work is currently underway to convert the Northern Gas Pipeline to flow gas bidirectionally, allowing east coast supply to be delivered to the Northern Territory to fuel local gas generation, where supply shortfalls triggered a power outage in early February.”
Jemena built the pipeline last decade to link Territory gas supplies with the east coast, which was suffering gas supply shortfalls.
During the pipeline’s planning phase, then chief minister Adam Giles described it as a matter of urgency for the eastern states.
“The opportunity around developing (a) gas pipeline means for Australians, particularly on the eastern seaboard, there will be a greater flow of gas into the future, which will meet the looming shortcomings of gas supply particularly in NSW on the back end of 2017 moving into 2019,” he said.
In February, 20,000 Top End homes were left without power when issues around gas supply at the Black Tip field forced an hour-long, early-evening blackout.
Then chief minister Eva Lawler posted on Facebook the outage had been a “loss of gas supply”.
At the time an industry expert pointed out the size of the Northern Territory’s failure, located between the Barossa and Beetaloo gas reserves and faced with gas supply shortages.
Development of Santos’ Barossa gas field was bogged down by activist-driven legal action and the Beetaloo project has been held up by a lengthy moratorium, two inquiries and is now subject to further legal challenges from Environment Centre NT.
The AER forecast Power and Water’s revenue growth at $1bn, up 26 per cent, with a 41 per cent increase in capital expenditure to $546m and a 2.4 per cent decline in operating expenditure to $372m.
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Originally published as Gas rich Northern Territory forced to source east coast gas to stop blackouts
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