As Night Follows Day: increased unconventional gas mining led to higher domestic gas prices

MacroBusiness acting shocked on 18 July 2016 that the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) and gas industry, with the connivance of government, delivered the unfair domestic gas pricing scheme that the anti-coal seam gas movement repeatedly stated that it would:

Another shocker of a week for gas users with MB’s east coast average price still at an astonishing $10.86Gj for spot markets while in Japan the same Australian gas can be purchased for $5.75Gj:

…….

To sum up:

$80 billion dollars has been burned on three LNG plants in QLD that make no money;

but, they are a part of an east coast gas cartel that can charge whatever they like at home given their exports have generated a shortage;

that is, locals are subsidising the export losses of Banana Republican gas titans who mis-allocated this much capital piled upon pallets:

and, to boot, we’ve given ourselves epic Dutch disease because our manufacturing is driven out of business owing to cheap gas in Japan (and everywhere else but here).

This rates as one of the most singularly stupid and rapacious examples of the “resources curse” anywhere in the Third World which, frankly, is where our policy-makers seem to have learned their craft…..