It’s ludicrous to say there is a gas crisis in Australia when we are set to overtake Qatar to become the world’s biggest gas producer. Australia has plenty of gas to meet our needs and the world has three times as much fossil fuel reserves that can be used to keep global temperature rises below 2C.

We have so much gas that we export most of it. The gas companies are shipping off huge amounts of it because they can reap greater profits overseas, leaving Australian households and businesses to squabble over what’s left at inflated prices.

When Australian industries say they may have to cut production because of a lack of gas as it’s sent overseas, things are getting ridiculous. When there is talk of importing gas, things are getting plain stupid.

We should not be pushing new fossil fuel schemes when the world is heading towards a climate change point of no return. It’s time to pursue renewables, with energy analyst RepuTex saying with better storage technology, their true cost is cheaper than gas.

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Governments are using this confected gas crisis to push environmentally destructive gas projects on Australian communities that don’t want them. Recently the independent Australian Energy Market Operator singled out the beleaguered Narrabri gas project in north-west NSW.

Santos’s Narrabri gas project has a long tragic history of failure in the Pilliga forest, with at least 20 toxic coal seam gas waste water spills, including the contamination of an aquifer with uranium and other toxic heavy metals.

The Pilliga is NSW’s last great inland forest, home to many threatened species including our treasured koala and the Pilliga mouse. It’s also a major recharge zone for the Great Artesian Basin, an essential water source for inland Australia, and part of the Murray Darling basin, Australia’s biggest food bowl.

Those toxic spills came from less than 50 exploration wells but last month Santos finally lodged an application to drill 850 production wells in the Pilliga and the surrounding productive farmland, three years behind schedule.

Santos had written off the project before this renewed gas push, and hived it off to be managed separately with other “non-core assets” as it tries to repay its massive $4.5bn debt, including the $1bn it has lost on the Narrabri folly that locals don’t want.

This project has been dogged for years with protests by farmers, townspeople, traditional owners and environmentalists – which will only continue. An overwhelming 96% of landholders representing 3.2m hectares of land that Santos holds leases over have declared themselves gasfield free.

Santos is also involved in this latest gas push to further open up the Cooper Basin around the spectacular natural marvel that is Lake Eyre, along with Beach Energy and Senex.

Senex is also pursuing exploration in the Simpson desert, which was set to be declared a South Australian wilderness protection area. And there are plans to frack for gas in the Northern Territory and Western Australia’s Kimberley.

Furthermore, the federal government is virtually giving much of our gas away to multinational gas companies, thanks to the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT). This is theft of natural resources, theft of communities’ rights and theft of our environment and a safe climate.

The PRRT was designed to capture 40% of the profits companies earn from selling our oil and gas, yet in 2013-14, it earned just 5% of the $29.5bn oil and gas companies earned from those resources because of the overly generous tax credits. And the tax take is falling.

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The PRRT credits give companies a 150% rebate on most exploration expenses in designated frontier areas but, more extraordinarily, the rebate increases 18% a year (current bond rate plus 15%).



The oil and gas industry has racked up $238bn in the fully transferable PRRT credits, climbing $82bn in the past two years. The PRRT tax credits are growing faster than the revenue they are supposed to be taxing. Equally appalling is the fact that oil companies can get these generous tax breaks for the cost of cleaning up an oil spill if there is one in the pristine waters in which they operate.

There has been $200bn spent on gas projects in the recent boom, but the largest project, Chevron’s $70bn Gorgon project in Western Australia, is not expected to pay anything for the gas it extracts if oil prices persist below US $60 a barrel as expected.

Chevron, which has plans to drill for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight, paid no PRRT or even income tax in Australia in 2013-14 and actually claimed a $5.7m tax refund.

Australia is expected to pass Qatar to become the world’s biggest gas exporter by 2021 but the Qatar government is expected to earn $27bn for its gas compared with our government’s expected take of $800m.

So it’s ludicrous to say there is a gas crisis in Australia. And it’s even more stupid to risk our climate, our precious water resources such as the Great Artesian Basin, and iconic natural assets such as the Pilliga, the Kimberley, the Top End, the Simpson desert, Lake Eyre and the Great Australian Bight for multinational gas companies to make a fast buck at our expense.