The gas industry and the State government have been singing from the same songbook for some time but now they are being more open about it.

Ms Hargreaves tells us “and yes, we are seeking to help NSW to become more self-reliant in gas.  NSW currently produces about five per cent of its own gas needs, importing 95 per cent from inter-state. This makes us vulnerable to external supply and price shocks.”

These are the same misleading claims the gas industry has been making for months.  

Whether a gas field is on one side of a State line or the other makes no difference in itself to the price or availability of the gas. 

The east coast of Australia is a single gas market linked by a network of pipes, soon to be linked to the world by export shipping. 

The State boundary does however make a difference to which miner makes the profit from rising gas prices and which State government collects the royalties from it. 

Developing Gloucester is all about who gets the money.

Ms Hargreaves wants to reduce our dependence on others. 

The gas lobby constantly plays on this imagined patriotism, as if gas miners wore blue or maroon jerseys and drilling holes was a matter of State pride. 

It’s interesting that while AGL was supplying NSW with conventional gas from Moomba and Victoria (which still have plenty) this wasn’t an issue.

They repeat that producing gas in NSW will keep the price down. There is no evidence for this. 

The reason the price is going up and will keep going up, is that the local market will become linked to the much higher overseas market, not because there is too little gas extracted in NSW.

The demand for gas in NSW has not changed. The supply from previous sources out of State is not exhausted. 

The difference is that the huge exports from new fields in QLD will link the local gas price to the export price where previously the two markets were separate and the local price could stay much lower. 

NSW doesn’t have a problem with gas supply; AGL has a problem with gas supply.

As only a retailer AGL’s profit margin is strictly limited by IPART (the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal) but as a retailer and producer their profits might be huge. 

Developing gas fields in NSW will not prevent a substantial price rise but it will change who makes the big money. AGL and the State government desperately want it to be them.

AGL say they will not export their gas. This is a red herring because there is no need.

AGL can benefit from the price rise by either sending Gloucester gas to Quneesland, where a shortage is predicted due to export commitments, or by selling it locally at the export price, or near to it. 

To imagine that AGL will do neither is ludicrous but that is what the combined songbook says we should believe.

When was the last time the State changed the law specifically to allow AGL to frack without having an EIS?

When did Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson answer a question on CSG by reading from an AGL press release? 

When did a deputy head of a government department last publicly lobby for a public company in her official capacity? 

All these things happened in the last month. You have to ask yourself why the State is bending over backwards to help AGL.

David Hare-Scott

Wards River