The Australian - $2bn plan to 'fuel petroleum needs'. Blood and coal ?

A $2 BILLION coal project will be unveiled today in Victoria's Latrobe Valley as its backer suggests Australia could replace all petroleum imports by turning the nation's vast reserves of brown coal to oil. Victorian Premier John Brumby will launch the Australian Energy Company's project to turn brown coal into enough urea, a nitrogen-rich fertiliser, to supply Australia's needs.

The plant uses coal gasification and condensing technology. Its backers say all the CO2 produced will be stored beneath the sea, making it a "clean coal" project. The entrepreneur behind the project, Allan Blood, said Victoria's reserves of brown coal had enormous potential for fertiliser and oil production. The plant would generate 1.2million tonnes a year of urea and all the CO2 produced would be stored in reservoirs that once contained natural gas in Bass Strait.

Joel Makower - Going Down Under, Down Under

My too-brief Australian adventure took place en route to Wellington, New Zealand, from where this is being written. I'm here for World Environment Day, which, for the initiated, is a United Nations-sponsored event, celebrated since the mid 1980s each June 5, hosted by a different city. Wellington is this year's host and the theme — "Kicking the Carbon Habit" — seems as fanciful as it is formidable. In typical U.N. fashion, it is relatively uncontroversial, meaning no swipes at Big Oil or Big Coal, no carping at Big Auto or Big Finance, no finger-pointing at Big Mining or Big Timber, no blaming of countries, political leaders, or pretty much anyone else. We're all here to be part of the solution.

Everything else down here should be so uncomplicated. Unfortunately, Australia and, so a lesser extent, New Zealand, seem to be going through the same throes of change as their brethren in Japan, North America, Europe, and elsewhere. High energy prices are roiling national politics, leading legislators to propose short-term gas tax rollbacks to ease prices at the pump. Administration officials, scientists, and activists are debating the extent to which the country should cut its carbon emissions — and who should pay for it. Critics charge the national government is giving short shrift to clean energy, while solar, geothermal, and wind energy companies are vying with one another over who will get the spoils of the country's growing appetite for clean energy. Meanwhile, the local media are having a field day finding hypocrites amid the ranks: legislators touting fuel efficiency but driving gas-guzzlers; corporations touting their green credentials but leaving their office lights burning brightly all night; the frivolity of government ethanol mandates amid rising food prices.

Port Macquarie News - Look at detail says power plant company

THE company behind the power plant proposed in the Camden Haven wants the community to assess the submission in detail. International Power Australia has lodged an application with the state government to build a $110 million power plant just north of the Kew sewage treatment plant, about 24km south-west of Port Macquarie.

The plan has whipped up community outrage. International Power Australia group manager corporate affairs Jim Kouts said the company was aware of community concerns. "We are seriously trying to put across as much detail as we can," he said. "We are providing to the community everything we are providing to the government," he said.

The plant would run during times of peak energy demand up to 10 per cent of the year. Mr Kouts said the company was responding to the area's growing energy needs. "We appreciate the concerns but we would also urge people to carefully look at the detail in our submission when you compare other options," he said. International Power Australia plans to run the plant on diesel fuel with the capacity to convert to gas down the track, if a gas pipeline comes through the area.

The Australian - Shell joins coal seam gas race

GLOBAL gas majors are in a scramble to get a foothold in Queensland's rapidly evolving coal seam methane industry, having bid more than $10 billion for reserves in the past few days as they look to feed a huge predicted jump in Asian liquefied natural gas demand.

The Australian - Benefits of deals break on Beach Petroleum

ADELAIDE'S "other" oil and gas group Beach Petroleum believes that coal-seam methane (CSM) reserves on its books at $40 million are now worth about $1 billion, thanks to a flurry of deals and attempted deals in the sector. The action in the CSM market hit fever pitch in last week's spectacular deal between Santos and Malaysia's Petronas and continued yesterday as Arrow Energy sold some of its deposits to Shell. Long the poor cousin in the oil and gas sector, CSM's sharp re-rating in recent weeks has taken many by surprise.

Crikey - Oil Futures part 4: A series on oil, the future, and you

The high price of petrol today is causing discomfort among motorists. So much so that our federal politicians have spent almost two weeks haggling over whose scheme is best suited to knocking a few cents per litre from the pump price.

But in a world where oil is increasingly scarce, where the security of supply remains a problem, and where the environmental cost of using fossil fuels to power your car will be factored into the pump price, is that the right response? What are the long terms solutions to our oil dependence? And is this the beginning of a new era of high-priced oil?

Crikey asked a panel of experts to answer questions on the good old days of cheap oil, what the politicians should really be arguing about, and how our economy will look when petrol costs many dollars per litre. Today, in the final in the series, Tihomir Ancev, lecturer in resource and environmental economics at the University of Sydney, answers Crikey's questions.

SMH - War based on a lie, says Rudd

THE withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq reopened old wounds yesterday, when Kevin Rudd accused the Coalition of taking the nation to war based on a lie. In a terse statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister said the Howard government had embarked on the mission using abused intelligence and "without a full and proper assessment" of the consequences. Supporting the war without approval of the United Nations had set a dangerous precedent and undermined the international system, Mr Rudd said.

Peak Energy - A war based on a lie

Brendan Nelson wasn't happy about this, complaining about weapons of mass destruction, Islamic terrorism and all sorts of other phantom menaces posed by the disarmed, secular dictator of Iraq at the time (now conveniently long dead courtesy of the death squad he was handed over to after his rushed trial, which had somehow avoided going over his worst crimes, possibly because of the inconvenient issues presented by naming his accomplices).

In honour of this little outburst, Crikey celebrated Dr Nelson's little bout of inadvertent truth telling last year, when he noted that the war was about oil.

Crikey - Iraq Withdrawal Sparks Only Polite Outrage From Nelson

Parliament took some time out from the petrol debate yesterday -- although, toward the end, even the Opposition chucked it in and began asking about something else. Question time was preceded by statements from Rudd and Nelson on the Iraq withdrawal.

Rudd commendably took the opportunity to get stuck into the previous Government over its participation in the attack on Iraq. This should never be glossed over or forgotten -- the Coalition took a considered decision to commit Australian troops to an illegal, immoral and, as it has turned out, plain stupid attack on Iraq, and Simon Crean, who was Opposition Leader at the time, copped plenty for leading Labor in opposing it.

Five years and literally uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqi dead later, a Labor Government is withdrawing our troops and the best the Coalition can do is mumble about the job not being done. ...

More impressively, however, Nelson did what only Dick Cheney has so far been willing to do -- link the war on Iraq to September 11, talking at length about "the heinous events of 11 September 2001" and how it explained the need to remove Saddam Hussein (and can everyone in public life please look up how to pronounce "heinous", because none of you ever do. If in doubt, watch the end of Kentucky Fried Movie for an excellent discussion of its pronunciation).

Don’t dismiss Nelson’s link out of hand. This is the bloke, after all, who as Defence Minister in the previous Government declared that Australia should stay in Iraq because of its oil.

Which, at the very least, gives the lie to the Government’s claims that the Coalition did nothing about oil prices during its time in office. On the contrary, it actually went to the trouble of joining in a war over oil. It’s just that it was a miserable failure.