Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher has criticised the Australian government for pursuing energy policies that aren’t “sensible or prudent,” saying the uncertainty is scaring away investment and concerning the country’s Asian partners.
Gallagher lamented that Australia did not have a bipartisan energy policy and “power has been handed to the Greens essentially, and they just want to shut everything down, right?”
“Ultimately, that’s where we are today, we have a challenging environment—but I call on the government to work together so that we can have sensible energy policies, sensible climate policies,” Gallagher said in Adelaide following Santos’ annual general meeting,
Gallagher referred to Santos’ offshore Barossa gas project off the coast of the Northern Territory (NT), which has faced scrutiny and legal challenges and might be impacted by the Labor government’s “safeguard mechanism” for cutting emissions despite being 55 per cent complete.
“All of the gas from Barossa for the next 15 years, it’s sold, it’s sold to Japan and Korea—they depend on that energy for their energy,” he said.
“And we’ve got to take that stuff seriously. We can’t just be turning things off at short notice and changing the rules.”
Gallagher said he supported the safeguard mechanism but added the $4.7 billion Barossa project, due for completion in 2025, should be considered “grandfathered” in because it is so far along.
“I don’t like the fact that a retrospective change can affect a project after it’s been FID and it’s 55 percent constructed,” he said, using an acronym for a final investment decision.
“That does not like a sensible or prudent policy to me. That seems like a deal with the Greens.”
Gallagher said he wanted to work with the government but asked it to give clarity and the regulatory framework as quickly as possible so Santos could get on and do what it needed to do.
He also called on Australia to do more around carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a way to combat greenhouse emissions.
“The anti-oil-and-gas activists around the world push back on that, a lot of pressure on governments to not support CCS, because their fear is it only prolongs oil and gas.
“But oil and and gas is going be here whether CCS is here or not. That’s just a fact of life - you cannot replace oil and gas.”
Renewable energy can only produce electricity, while oil and gas is used as a feedstock to produce many items from everyday life, Mr Gallagher noted.
Mr Gallagher also boasted of what he described as Santos’ strong relationship with Indigenous stakeholders with the projects it has up and running.
He said while Santos consulted widely on the Barossa project, he respected a recent Federal Court decision that had broadened the spectrum of the stakeholders that the company needed to consult with and said that process has begun.
A smoking ceremony was held by traditional owners outside the Adelaide Convention Centre, where the AGM was held.
