The Oil Drum: Local

Last year I took a look at the question "Should Natural Gas Be Used To Power New Zealand ?", after reading an article from NZ PEPA executive John Pfahlert arguing that New Zealand should be building new gas fired power stations instead of trying to become carbon neutral, and concluded that this seemed a rather risky strategy - depending on continuing offshore exploration success.

The view of the Australian government and gas industry seems to be that our gas supplies are essentially unlimited, with the phrase "more than a century of supplies left" bandied about at every opportunity. Ex-Prime Minister John Howard used to dream of Australia becoming an "energy superpower", with a vastly expanded gas (LNG) export industry being a cornerstone of this vision, based on Western Australian LNG exports from offshore gas fields.

In this post I'll have a look at how much gas Australia has and how long it will last under a variety of scenarios - from an indefinite continuation of the current rate of production to a pell-mell conversion to use gas for all our energy needs combined with a rapid expansion of LNG exports.

The APPEA 2008 Conference is on in Perth this week - this is a roundup of the press commentary today (or yesterday, by the time you are likely to read it).

ABC - More than 2,000 oil and gas experts gather in Perth

Representatives of the oil and gas industry will discuss ways to tackle the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, making workplaces safer and addressing the skills shortage at a conference in Perth today. More than 2,000 people associated with the oil and gas industry are meeting to discuss new demands and challenges facing the industry in Australia and overseas.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPE) expects world energy demand to increase by 40 per cent by 2030. The chief executive of APPE, Belinda Robinson, says the industry needs to devise ways to meet the growing energy demand while still achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. "If we can triple our LNG production on the basis that most of that goes to the Asia Pacific region we will be helping the Asia Pacific region reduce its greenhouse footprint," she said.