Coalition colleagues urge Malcolm Turnbull to head off energy crisis
Prime minister told to adopt a domestic gas reservation policy to deal with forecast LNG shortages. The prime minister is under mounting internal pressure to adopt a domestic gas reservation policy to deal with forecast shortages. The chairman of the government’s backbench committee on energy and the environment, Craig Kelly, has said it is something Malcolm Turnbull should consider. With Turnbull due to meet senior executives from the east coast gas companieson Wednesday, Kelly told Guardian Australia the government needed to be open to adopting a reservation policy to ensure that a looming lack of gas supply did not create a full-blown energy crisis. Kelly said he would be open to either the Queensland government’s policy to reserve a specific area for development for domestic supply only, or to the Western Australian policy, where 15% of the gas produced by each liquefied natural gas project must be kept for domestic use. Kelly’s intervention follows similar arguments last week from the Nationals MP Andrew Broad, who is the chairman of federal parliament’s environment and energy committee – a separate committee made up of MPs from across the parliament. Broad told Guardian Australia’s Politics Live podcast there needed to be serious consideration about whether 15% of gas supply should be reserved for Australian manufacturing. The prime minister summoned the gas chiefs to this week’s meeting with the government after the Australian Energy Market Operator issued a pointed warning that New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia would likely face gas shortages from the summer of 2018-19.
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on Mar 13 2017. Filed under News at Now.
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