Surely the world's second biggest exporter isn't about to run short of gas?

We are, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although not for the reasons that are widely believed.

The conventional wisdom has been that when three big exporters opened six big liquification plants at Gladstone in Queensland and locked themselves into long-term supply contracts with Japan that they couldn't fulfil they had to commandeer gas that the rest of us would have used.

That did happen, but it's not the main reason we're about to run short of gas. It's that the exporters also shipped a lot of extra gas overseas, in addition to the gas they were contractually obliged to export.