Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
PERTH, Apr. 8 -- Australia is to undertake a national energy security assessment that will include the country's future liquid fuels outlook. The NESA will provide the basis for a new energy white paper before yearend.
Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson revealed these plans during his principal address on the opening day of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) Conference in Perth.
The minister said Australia was "oil challenged," but Australia is a world-class natural gas province.
Ferguson said Australia has about 10 years' worth of oil supplies at current production levels without any further discoveries. The country also will have to deal with a $25 billion (Aus.) trade deficit in petroleum products by 2015.
Australia should continue to diversify its energy resources, Ferguson noted. For example, he said that it is as important for the nation to encourage exploration in frontier basins as it is to push for research and development of alternative fuel industries, including the potential to convert some of the country's vast gas resources to synthetic fuels.
Regarding Australia's vast gas resources, Ferguson said, "We have been finding gas faster than we produce it for a quarter of a century and we have well over 110 years' worth of remaining resources at today's production rates," he said. "In fact, there is significantly more if we include the vast potential of coal seam methane where Queensland is leading the world in production technology."
Ferguson said the move to "energize change" in Australia is about creating the partnerships necessary between governments and industry to get more major projects off the ground. He added that it was an enormous challenge in an escalating cost and tightening investment and labor environment.
"But the rapidly growing LNG market in the Asia Pacific—and the Indian rim—will not wait for us," he said.
Ferguson said several LNG project proposals could result in Australia's LNG exports to reach 60 million tonnes/year by 2015, ranking the country as the world's third-largest LNG exporter behind Qatar and Nigeria. These project include Gorgon, Browse, Ichthys, Wheatstone, Pilbara LNG, Darwin Phase 2, and Gladstone.
This gas outlook, however, excludes discoveries in the country's north and northwest such as Caldita, Chandon, Clio, and Thebe, or more-remote fields such as Scarborough. Ferguson said these finds are all part of Australia's future and that no responsible government can sit idly by and allow them to be stranded.
He added that the productivity commission's review of regulatory and approvals processes is a very important opportunity for governments to streamline major project development processes for investors.
The minister also said the government will be rigorously applying the test of commerciality to retention lease renewals and conducting a review of the retention lease system for the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources.
