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Households face being plunged into darkness – while paying even more for power – without action on Australia’s gas shortage.

Industry leaders are eager to tackle the looming deficit, but to have any hope of success they say that politicians and regulators must end lengthy project approval delays.

Today the Herald Sun launches a week-long series explaining the critical importance of stepping on the gas to head off a crisis that also threatens to drive jobs offshore and trash the transition to renewables.

Woodside Energy CEO Meg O’Neill said a lack of availability would add to the cost of electricity and consumer goods produced using gas.

“As any first-year university economics student will tell you, the surest way to bring down prices in any market is to increase supply,” she said.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission warned in a report in July that the eastern gas market – which connects Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart – would face shortages from 2027, a year earlier than it had forecast just six months prior.

The heavy reliance on fossil fuels is evident in the National Electricity Market when the sun sets and gas- and coal-fired power ramp up to provide the bulk of energy to Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

A snapshot last Thursday night showed 91 per cent of Queensland’s power was coming from black coal and gas.

Industry group Australian Energy Producers’ chief Samantha McCulloch said it would be “gas that needs to step in and keep the lights on”.

Ms McCulloch said Victoria was “sleepwalking towards a cliff” after the “demonisation” of gas and blocking of supply.

Just days ago Sydney residents were warned not to run washing machines or dishwashers in the evening and government departments switched off the lights amid fears the grid would be unable to handle a warm day.
Transmission pipeline giant APA’s managing director Adam Watson said a shortage would threaten the viability of local manufacturers of building products required to construct much-needed housing and fertiliser to grow food.

“We need to move – now,” Mr Watson said. “Gas is the way to keep industry going, which translates into keeping jobs in Australia.”

In its report in July the ACCC said the reason it predicted the shortage to hit sooner was lower forecast supply “due to delays in anticipated regulatory approvals for new projects and problems with legacy gas fields”.
There was an “urgent need to develop new sources of gas production and supply”, the commission advised.
But the boss of gas and oil firm Santos, Kevin Gallagher, said stepping on the gas was the one thing other regulators were not focused on.

Mr Gallagher said that at the start of the year Santos was working off version 72 of the National Gas Rules, but “today our marketers are working off version 82”.

He also cited the ongoing battle Santos has faced to get its Narrabri project, in western NSW, up and running.
“The environmental impact statement for that project was submitted in 2017 and, in 2024, the production licences for Narrabri still cannot be granted because of ongoing litigation over native title and climate change,” he said.

Mr Watson said he feared the newer Beetaloo project in the Northern Territory would suffer the same fate.
“If we keep putting hurdles up then we can’t bring it to market in time to address the shortfall,” he said.
“At times it feels like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

Ms O’Neill said: “Investment has been held up by the uncertainty caused by policy interventions, slow and complex approval processes, and lawfare waged by anti-industry activist groups.”

These delays also threaten the transition to net zero, she said, as gas-fired power generators would become increasingly important to grid reliability, backing up renewables “when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing”.

“Without gas the east coast electricity system is even more at risk,” Ms O’Neill argued.

She said NSW was also in trouble, but Queensland and SA were better off after backing exploration and development.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s spokeswoman said the government had secured an extra 600 petajoules for the eastern market and expanded the Australian Energy Market Operator’s powers to manage seasonal supply pressures.