AUSTRALIA has become the world’s largest single gas exporter, ahead of Qatar.
“For the first time ever, Australia has exported more gas than Qatar in November and it looks like we will lead them in annual exports too over the next year,” Resources and Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan said.
“Australia is on track for annual exports of 77 million tonnes a year.
“This underlines the strength of Australia’s gas industry – with earnings expected to increase more than 60pc from $31b in 2017/18 to $50b in 2018/19 – but also the potential value to the Australian economy from continuing to discover more gas deposits and bringing them into production.”
Mr Canavan said total resource and energy exports were expected to earn a record $264b in 2018/19, generating more than half the total value of Australia’s exports.
However, Mr Canavan warned new investment and better development processes were needed to maintain the sector’s success.
“The industry’s strong results can only continue if new investment is encouraged and the development of projects proceeds efficiently,” Mr Canavan said.
“Producers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 15 years to unlock new deposits and build world-class infrastructure.
“Around $170b in resource projects are now at the feasible stage and rated as either ‘likely’ or ‘possible’ to proceed to construction and we must capitalise on this by improving the development process.
“I have started that discussion with my state and territory counterparts, so we can try to streamline the development process for resource and energy projects, attract more investment and boost productivity.”
The figures are contained in the December 2018 Resources and Energy Quarterly.
