Australia is becoming one of the world’s biggest exporters of gas
WALLAROOS, bandicoots and other marsupials on Barrow Island off the north-west coast of Australia will watch curiously over coming months as workers start building a huge plant to liquefy natural gas there. The project, called Gorgon after the group of gasfields lying under the seabed nearby, had been on the drawing board for 30 years before a surge in demand for gas from booming Asian countries finally got things moving. Jon Chadwick, an executive vice-president at Royal Dutch Shell, which is involved in Gorgon and several other liquefied natural gas (LNG) schemes nearby, predicts that by 2020 Australia could become the world’s second-biggest exporter of LNG (it is now fifth), surpassed only by Qatar.
Australia has long been considered a “lucky country” thanks to its wealth of natural resources. Prodigious exports of iron ore, coal and other commodities have helped it survive the global downturn without a recession. Ken Henry, Australia’s most senior financial bureaucrat, talks of “a period of unprecedented prosperity” ahead. If so, gas will be one of its main drivers, dwarfing even earlier resource booms in its scale. …



