Blood in the streets

How much more "blood in the streets" before the Gov stops talking and starts taking action.

Invest in ways to increase the supply to meet the demand.

Don't create artificial rules around fair trade.

Increase funding to those companies that can accelerate and increase supply and let economics take its course.

Sad state of politics versus prudent economics and poor short term judgement.

It's easy but politics is getting in the way.

Focus on SXY, BPT, COE and others not just the self serving big guys.

That's my two cents.

So sad to see the results of weak politicians. This is not new news,  but has been on the cards for 18 months+ and now hard working Australians are paying the price.

• Energy: Gas crisis pushes methanol plant to US
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  Grant Lukey says Coogee Chemicals is very close to sending its mothballed methanol plant to the US. TREVOR COLLENS
  by Ben Potter
  The east coast gas crisis has pushed Perth-based Coogee Chemicals to the brink of a decision to ship a mothballed methanol plant from Melbourne's west to the United States for reassembly and expansion.
  
  With the existing 250-tonne-a-day plant would go the prospect of a new $1 billion export plant that the company abandoned three years ago because it could not get the gas it would have needed to run it in Victoria.
  
  It's the latest example of jobs and investment being sacrificed to Australia's unfolding energy crisis. The Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday that eastern states manufacturers would be left short of gas this winter unless Queensland's liquefied natural gas exporters redirected gas to the local market, yet NSW and Victoria have thwarted new onshore production.
  
  That's pushed domestic gas prices to unaffordable levels – if local firms can get gas at all – and helped push electricity prices to record levels, leading to the loss of about 100 jobs at Rio Tinto's Boyne Smelters.
  
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  Coogee Chemicals, mothballed methanol plant, Laverton, west of Melbourne photo: supplied . Supplied
  More than 70 jobs and about 250 indirect jobs are also threatened at National Ceramic Industries Australia, based in Rutherford in the NSW Hunter Valley, because the company cannot operate profitably at the $20 a gigajoule gas price offered by AGL Energy, managing director Chris Schneider said.
  
  'Blood in the streets'

Coogee Chemicals owner, Rich Lister Gordon Martin, warned in The Australian Financial Review three years ago that there would be "blood in the streets" if the eastern states didn't embrace unconventional onshore gas production and make gas available for local industry.

Chief executive Grant Lukey said the warning had come to pass. "There is blood in the streets and it was known about years ago and it's too little too late – all those LNG plants are literally sucking up every available gigajoule of gas."

Coogee's existing plant at Laverton, west of Melbourne, was mothballed a year ago with the loss of 30 direct jobs and indirect jobs such as cleaners, maintenance contractors and suppliers. One casualty was Coogee's supplier of industrial gases, France's Air Liquide, which is understood to have had to restructure its business in Victoria as a result.

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Ed Whatson, executive chairman of Remapak, Australia's last market of polystyrene foam coffee cups, wrote to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and energy minister Josh Frydenberg outlining the company's plight Remapak
The abandoned export plant would have employed about 100-plus full-time employees as well as contractors. Coogee Chemicals may now pursue that opportunity in the US if it goes ahead with the decision to relocate the existing plant.

US gas surplus
The company is following in the footsteps of fertiliser manufacturer Incitec Pivot, which built a $US850 million ($1.1 billion) plant in Louisiana because gas, labour and planning approvals were much more readily available there than in Newcastle.

Mr Lukey said the gas contract for the existing methanol plant had expired in 2015 and the company mothballed it a year ago because it hadn't been able to secure the 3 petajoules of gas it needed to operate the plant.

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The Queensland LNG projects are under pressure to release gas into the domestic market. Supplied
"The gas suppliers were unable to offer us gas for three years at any price so we went from operating the plant for 22 years with secure gas availability to not being able to get any gas at all," Mr Lukey said.

Victoria's largest gas supplier is the ExxonMobil-BHP Billiton joint venture.

Mr Lukey said the company was "very close" to a decision to dismantle the plant and shift it to the US where "labour is very competitive, the energy price for power is very competitive and it's in a region which has a surplus of natural gas".

No free market
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Ed Whatson, executive chairman of Remapak, Australia's last market of polystyrene foam coffee cups, wrote to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and energy minister Josh Frydenberg describing the gas crisis as the biggest to hit manufacturing in a decade Remapak
In the process of re-assembling the plant at the new site, it would be "debottlenecked" to expand the capacity to 400 tonnes of methanol a day at a cost of $US150 million.

National Ceramic Industries' Mr Schneider will be part of a delegation of gas users to Canberra next week hoping to press home their plight to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.

The delegation will also include Bluescope chief executive Paul O'Malley, Dick Honan, prominent Liberal and National parties donor and owner of Manildra Group, an energy-hungry flour milling and ethanol group that faces huge increases in its electricity and gas bills, Remapak, Australia's last manufacturer of polystyrene foam cups, and Western Aluminium, a processor of aluminium scrap and gas supplier.

They will ask the government for emergency intervention to direct the suppliers to Queensland's LNG export industry to redirect some gas to the domestic market – a step Resources Minister Matt Canavan baulked at – and keep Victoria's soon-to-closed Hazelwood power station open.


"I am a free market person but while we don't have a free market for natural gas the government needs to intervene to make it a level playing field," Mr Lukey said.