Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher has taken up the coalition’s battle cry for the gas industry to stand up for itself as part of the energy transition.
Australia can be a “carbon capture superpower”, taking emissions from gas production and heavy industries as a world leader in carbon management services, Santos chief executive Gallagher told an industry conference in Adelaide.
“The main game is gas because it makes renewables possible,” he said.
He said that if Santos could deliver abated gas to customers for about $24 a tonne, this would decrease the energy transition cost.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference Labor was doing everything possible to shut down coal and frustrate the gas sector.
Yet a surplus budget would not have been possible without the support of the industry, Dutton said in a recorded message.
“They’re jeopardising Australia’s energy security and discouraging foreign investment,” he said.
Dutton argued that the federal government was undermining reliable and affordable base-load power for homes and businesses.
He said they’re creating sovereign risk never before seen in Australia, and longstanding trading and investment partners are concerned.
Gas remains in the regulatory crosshairs, with Labor’s energy policy driven by “renewable zealotry”.
Dutton said the government’s first budget in October last year was an “all-out attack on the gas sector”, followed by price fixing - and yet power bills were still rising.
He warned that a proposed mandatory code of conduct meant the government would dictate gas prices in the east coast market.
In March, the government banned coal or gas infrastructure funding from the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund.
Then, working with the Greens, federal Labor passed reforms to the safeguard mechanism that forced the heavy industry to cut emissions by 4.9 per cent annually.
“It’s a new carbon tax - let’s call it for what it is - and it’s three times more than the one put forward by Julia Gillard,” Dutton said.
He pledged a future coalition government would rewind government intervention and trust industries to set their own net-zero pathway.
The “worst is yet to come” with proposed changes to the environmental laws and a new Environment Protection Agency, he said.
“Environmental approvals will be harder to obtain, slower to authorise and certainly more expensive.”
Gallagher said the Moomba carbon capture and storage (CCS) project being developed in South Australia would be a “game changer” for the future of gas in Australia and Asia.
“It will allow existing energy infrastructure, appliances and industrial processes to continue to be used while new technologies are commercialised over time,” he said.
One year away from its first injection of carbon dioxide, Gallagher said the Cooper Basin could store up to 20 million tonnes of carbon a year for the next 50 years.
He said Santos was also on track to meet a $75 per tonne target by 2030 for direct air capture technology under trial.
