Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.

All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.

The federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said after Friday’s meeting that the current practice of secret gas deals would be banned.

“Going forward, we want new gas contracts to be transparent. That is a very significant change,” he said. “We’ll have a bulletin board that will publish the prices of the gas contracts that have been agreed.”

The comments follow an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report in April that found that industrial users received offers “at sharply higher prices and on strict take-it-or-leave-it terms”.

The details of how the new system would work will be the job of a gas market reform group, headed by Michael Vertigan, which will be required to find ways to increase both gas supply and suppliers.

“These are the most significant reforms to the domestic gas market in two decades,” Frydenberg said in a statement.



Frydenberg said the council also agreed to examine ways to “ensure consumers can confidently take advantage of new technologies such as battery storage through the introduction of appropriate consumer protections”.

The council “recognised the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”.

Olivia Kember from the Climate Institute described the meeting as a “missed opportunity”.

“In considering the impact of climate and clean energy developments on the electricity system, we need to think beyond the current 2030 emissions target to deliver a well-managed transition to zero emission electricity,” she said.

Managing the closure of the dirty power generators was also something the council should have dealt with, Kember said.

“As we saw in South Australia, disorderly, unplanned closures can have bad consequences for the local community, energy users and the stability of the market as a whole,” she said.

Dylan McConnell from the Melbourne Energy Institute told Guardian Australia that the focus on gas seemed misplaced. “We actually have plenty of gas, it’s just all being exported,” he said.

“I am yet to be convinced that increased local supply will necessarily dramatic impact on prices, unless there is a gas reservation policy, which seems to be unpopular with just about everyone.”

He said the focus on gas as a “transition fuel” was also an outdated idea and not consistent with climate change targets.

“Gas may have a role in balancing variable renewables such as wind and solar PV – but will have to compete with storage including but not limited to pumped hydro, concentrating solar thermal and battery storage,” he said. “If it does have a balancing role, it will actually not produce much energy, operating in ‘peak’ mode, when required, but only for small periods of time. As such, the demand for gas to fire the turbine shouldn’t actually be very high.”