Think we all knew this

Well just proves what a lot thought that someone was behind all the originals being forced out. This proves it and SANTOS name did come up




The Andado station in the Northern Territory, where the coal-to-gas plant would be based.
Former Santos chairman Stephen Gerlach has launched plans to build a $3 billion coal-to-gas plant in the Northern Territory to supply tight east coast markets.
It’s a move he says will get around existing onshore gas bans and could supply 10 per cent of east coast domestic demand.
And he has called on the nation’s pension funds, with their vast financial muscle, to take a more active role in helping to solve what he says is a national energy security problem that is not being addressed.
Mr Gerlach is the chairman of Sydney-based Ebony Energy, which today revealed it is planning a $50 million initial public offering early next year to raise funds to study a coal mine and gas plant on the Andado cattle station 250km south east of Alice Springs and a 670km pipeline to the Moomba gas plant in South Australia.
“Energy security is a considerable unaddressed risk to Australia for many years, requiring long term solutions now to be found and implemented,” he told The Australian.
“This project will make a contribution to delivering on energy security in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.”
If it goes ahead, the Andado coal-to-gas project would mine about 4 million tonnes of coal from a new underground mine and convert it to 50 petajoules of sales gas a year using a plant Ebony has signed a non-binding agreement with global conglomerate GE to supply.
It would employ 2000 people during the construction phase and 200 people once it was up and running, with an investment decision targeted for 2019 and first production in 2022.
Mr Gerlach said the technology, which has been used for decades in other countries, will capture all sulphur and carbon dioxide emissions, which would then be used for other applications or stored.
“It is a large and ambitious project but one we are confident of being able to deliver,” he said.
It is expected to be economically competitive with current new gas developments that will require prices of $7 a gigajoule or more to be economic.
Mr Gerlach said the project would not be able to solve the need for more gas on its own but could play a big part.
Its flagged production of 140 terajoules a day represents about 10 per cent of current east coast domestic demand and compares with controversial plans by Santos to build a 200 terajoules per day coal seam gas operation at Narrabri.
“We need new projects and we need Australian government, the state governments and the investment community to give support to some of this infrastructure,” he said.
“There is trillions of dollars sitting in superannuation funds and it would be positive if some of that money drifted into some of these projects to support what we are doing.”
Mr Gerlach stepped down as Santos chairman in 2009 to make way for current chairman Peter Coates, two years before a final investment decision on the contentious $18bn Gladstone LNG project in Queensland.
Stephen Gerlach, left, with Peter Coates, in 2009.
He was part of early discussions on GLNG which, as the only one of three plants built at Curtis Island on a model of exporting some of its gas from existing domestic production, has shouldered much of the blame for the current east coast gas crisis.
“When those LNG projects were first mooted, there was no gas shortage and no moratoriums,” Mr Gerlach said, when asked whether Santos should have built two LNG production trains at Gladstone.
“The companies concerned were not in an environment where they were expecting the gas shortages we have today.”