The Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association’s (APPEA) chief executive has warned industry that they should not take for granted the security of Australia’s energy future.
Speaking at the WA Chamber of Commerce & Industry Resources Conference, APPEA chief executive Belinda Robinson said that while more than $100 billion worth of natural gas projects are currently planned for Western Australia alone, the majority of these are still some way off a final investment.
“While Australia has a lot going for it in terms of attracting investment, it is also one of the highest cost destinations in the world for exploration and production of natural gas,” Robinson said.
“The very high costs and fragile natural gas project economics mean that approvals and regulatory processes as well as market-intervention policies become very significant to natural gas projects going forward.”
A recent Productivity Commission report on approvals and regulatory processes affecting the upstream oil and gas industry concluded that the current regulatory burden is “diminishing the present value of petroleum resource extraction in Australia by billions of dollars each year”.
Referring to a recent WA Auditor General’s report, Robinson acknowledged that despite $37 million having been spent in the past few years on streamlining WA’s approvals processes, the Auditor General had found very little to show for it.
She said the upstream oil and gas industry had taken comfort from the WA Premier’s oft-stated commitment to tackling the problems but APPEA was concerned that momentum could be slowing.
“We would hope that the era of endless review may be coming to an end and that this weeks launch by the WA Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Norman Moore, of an online tracking system of environmental assessments and permit application marks a small but important beginning of a much anticipated action epoch” said Robinson.
“We know the problems. We know the solutions. What we really need now is action.”