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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-05-12 Daily Xml
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MOOMBA GAS FIELDS

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:17): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Mineral Resources Development a question regarding the Moomba gas fields and South Australia's energy future.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Members would be aware that Adelaide's power station at Torrens Island runs on natural gas that is pumped about 900 kilometres from our gas fields at Moomba. I note with concern that the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council's annual planning report says that supplies at Moomba have been diminishing since 2003. I understand that something in the order of about 9,000 megalitres of crude oil and about 4,000 megalitres of LPG remain at the site, which leaves about five or six years of life if extraction continues at the most recently reported rates. However, a document that I received last month by way of a freedom of information request implies that the limited remaining Moomba gas supplies are largely becoming unprofitable for the company to extract.

Moomba is the only significant resource of gas and oil that we have available ready and tapped in this state, so the concern is that from this point on we may be reliant upon interstate fuel through the SEA Gas line from Victoria and a new Epic Energy line from Queensland, and thus will potentially be unable to power our own power plant with South Australian gas in the future. My questions are:

1. What is the government doing to address this looming problem?

2. Can the minister foresee South Australia, already facing difficulty in fighting the Eastern States for water, also being reliant on Victoria (in this case) for natural gas in the future?

3. What is being done to secure long-term baseload power—not just wind and solar, which have severe limitations in terms of providing baseload power—to secure South Australia's energy self-sufficient future?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (15:19): The honourable member would be aware that the SEA Gas pipeline from Victoria was completed just in time (literally, by hours) to deal with the situation we had back on New Year's Day in 2004 or 2005 when the Moomba plant struck difficulties and was offline for a month or two over the peak period. We were very fortunate that that pipeline was finished just in time so that we could deal with the issues we faced.

While it has been known for some time that the known gas fields within the Cooper Basin have been in decline, there is some significant hope that new forms of gas (such as shale gas in horizontal pockets within the Cooper Basin) may well be the way of the future. I know that Reg Nelson, the Chief Executive of Beach Petroleum, has stated that he believes that we may only have actually so far discovered about 10 per cent of the total gas within the Cooper Basin and that anything up to 90 per cent may be available in these nonconventional gas resources.

If one looks at the United States, for years gas supplies were in decline but in recent years the amount of gas produced internally has gone up rapidly as these new nonconventional supplies of gas have been exploited. There is every hope, particularly with companies such as Beach which now have tie-ups with some of these American companies that are the leaders in the field of technology and gas recovery, that this may well become a source of gas for the future.

As I said, for some years now this state has already been drawing gas from Victoria, and there is also a pipeline between Ballera in Queensland and Moomba; and we are already using gas from the Queensland part of the Cooper Basin. Of course, in the future, depending on what happens with coal seam methane, which is another alternative form of gas within central Queensland, there is the possibility given the pipeline structure that that could be used for this state.

Therefore, if one looks at the gas that is available to south-eastern Australia, there are still significant gas supplies and there is the potential for gas from these new nonconventional sources. There is also work being undertaken in Queensland, and I have had a look at such operations, where the underground gasification of coal resources is taking place and being investigated as a much more environmentally sensitive alternative to the use of coal for directly firing power stations.

There is work being undertaken within this country and within this state in relation to some of those new technologies. I believe that we are not likely to run out of gas immediately. The conventional supplies which have been exploited for the last 40 years since the 1960s in the Cooper Basin are being depleted, but I think there is the prospect of other supplies of gas. Also, of course, we would hope that, within the next decade or so before we do start to experience problems in relation to gas availability, geothermal and other forms of energy will come onstream as longer-term alternatives.

What I am happy to do is to arrange a briefing for the honourable member, if he has not already had one, on the potential for new and alternative sources of gas to be used to provide energy for the South Australian market.

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