‘Gas belongs to the people': WA premier Roger Cook urges federal Labor to adopt reserve policy

The Guardian

16 hours ago

The West Australian Labor premier, Roger Cook, has encouraged his federal counterparts to consider a gas reserve on the east coast as it mulls a regulatory overhaul to shore up supply and contain prices.
Cook said WA's gas reservation policy, which requires offshore producers set aside 15% of supplies for local users, has resulted in cheaper gas for households and business since it was introduced in 2006.
After criticising Peter Dutton's gas reserve plan during the election campaign, the Albanese government is preparing to consider its own version as part of a six-month review of domestic gas market regulations.
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has signalled any mechanism would only apply to new projects, a key difference from Dutton's proposal.
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Cook said the principle underpinning his state's policy was that 'gas belongs to the people of Western Australia' and therefore households and industries should be the 'principal beneficiaries of those reserves'.
'I think it's clear that domestic gas reservation policies do have a positive impact in terms of making gas more affordable for households and industry. That's our experience in WA, so obviously I'd encourage other jurisdictions to consider the same,' he said.
Cook cautioned any policy needed to be designed and explained 'in a way that industry understands'.
The WA premier made the comments to Guardian Australia while in Japan, where he held talks with government officials and industry leaders about gas and energy transition.
Japan is one of the biggest customers of Australia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, importing the fossil fuel to help power its cities.
Japanese companies are investors in projects such as Woodside's North West Shelf gas plant in WA and Santos' Barossa venture off the Northern Territory coastline, meaning the country has a direct interest in the expansion of Australia's gas industry.
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Political and industry figures in Japan have repeatedly sounded the alarm about Australian government policies which they warn threaten new supplies, including the safeguard mechanism and gas price cap, underlining how sensitive the Asian nation is to potential disruptions.
In the interview, Cook repeated his claim that exporting gas to countries such as Japan was vital to global decarbonisation because it would help displace coal, a supposedly dirtier fossil fuel.
Cook said stakeholders in Japan told him the country needed LNG to achieve its target of reducing coal to 19% of its energy mix by 2030, down from 32% in 2019.
'What they're saying to us is that they're committed to the energy transition towards renewables, getting out of fossil fuels, but they can only do that via LNG as part of the overall energy mix,' he said.
Bill Hare, a WA-based physicist and climate scientist, said there was 'no scientific basis' to support claims that maintaining gas exports was critical to the clean energy transition.
'People need to be really skeptical about in whose interest these arguments are made, given that the scientific community is saying we need to be phasing out of gas quickly,' said Hare, who is the chief executive of Climate Analytics.
'It's essentially a Woodside argument that he's pushing.'
Referencing the ongoing toxic algal bloom in South Australia, floods emergencies in NSW and coral bleaching in WA, Hare said Cook's position on exports was 'not a responsible position'.
'I don't think it's in the interest of Australia,' he said.
Hare also noted reports Japan was on-selling Australian LNG gas to other countries in Asia, which he argued was delaying the region's energy transition.