By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
THE fact that high fuel prices are hurting all Australians across the board has given fresh impetus to a Queensland State Government plan to fast track oil and gas exploration in the Taroom Trough within the Bowen Basin in the state’s vast, mostly flat, underpopulated and economically fragile outback.
While gas explorers and developers have attracted a lot of flak from groups like Lock The Gate over their intrusive activity on farmland, the economic benefits for the country are talked about much less.
Those benefits might be as basic as a boom in business for a small-town servo or bakery from rig workers and maintenance crews or jobs for younger people and families otherwise inevitably drawn to the major cities. They have also boosted the local real estate markets, even if it has been something of a boom and bust situation. Farmers also directly benefit from additional rental income from wells.
But where the Queensland gas and oil project will help most is that it is proposed as supplier of the domestic market instead of exports, where most of our gas currently goes.
Queensland’s Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Dale Last, says the area has “serious potential to revitalise a domestic oil production industry” and was “a critical step in boosting Queensland’s domestic energy supplies to put downward pressure on energy prices.”
He says Taroom Trough gas production will be directed to the Australian market through a mechanism called the Australian Market Supply Condition.
But Lock the Gate national coordinator Ellen Roberts told the ABC that “experimental gas wells could be placed up to 4km underground” while gas wells that are capped and abandoned after they’ve finished producing gas, leave behind infrastructure that stays there forever.
Ms Roberts should understand that is also the case with wind turbines and to a lesser extent solar farms. In fact the footprint of a gas well is much smaller than the giant concrete pads required for wind turbine towers.
Wind and gas are also vastly different types of energy. Wind is part-time, sporadic, low-density energy, while gas is instant and essential as a filler for the frequent gaps in a wind and solar-based electricity supply streams.
Another entrenched greenie, Clare Silcock of the Queensland Conservation Council, told the ABC the announcements “directly contradicted the state government’s emissions reduction target of 75 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035.”
News flash Ms Silcock: The only people who care about “emission reduction targets” are enviro-nuts and Greens and Teal voters. We would bet on a national survey showing that most people would welcome an abundant and less expensive national fuel supply.
Meanwhile these same enviro-nuts are out in force on X and other media lecturing us about climate change and how electric vehicles are going to save the planet.
A more realistic view was posted by UK political activist Jim Ferguson who showed how the case of India was a “canary in the coalmine” example of what happens when a nation faces a fuel shortage.
“It’s losing fertilizer production, and that changes everything. No gas, no fertilizer, no fertilizer, reduced crop yields, reduced yields, food shortages. This is the chain reaction,” said Ferguson.
He said India is one of the world’s largest food producers, a key supplier across Asia and the No.2 producer of rice and sugar. “If India slows down millions feel it,” he said.
Ferguson said the wider picture was Brazil under pressure and US harvest risks building. “Three of the world’s biggest agricultural engines… all facing disruption at the same time. This isn’t a local issue. This is systemic.
“Food prices don’t rise slowly in these conditions, they spike. And when they spike in regions where people live on $1–2 a day it doesn’t take much to trigger instability.”
The fuel shortage in India was underscored in a video posted by Ferguson showing dozens of motorcyclists and car drivers waiting in line for a few litres of petrol and a fight breaking out.
Maalouf Michel, author of The Daily Brief, said 50 per cent of global urea fertilizer transited the Strait of Hormuz.
“That supply is effectively gone and unlike oil, there are no strategic fertilizer reserves – not in the US, not in Europe, not anywhere,” he said.
“Oil has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Gas can be substituted with coal. Copper has stockpiles. Fertilizer has nothing. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And the spring planting window doesn’t wait for geopolitics. Every day the strait stays closed is a day closer to a harvest that can’t be recovered.”
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