Bloomberg - Santos Predicts Growth in Unconventional Gas Supplies

Unconventional sources of natural gas, such as coal seam and shale, are likely to increase their contribution to supplies of the fuel, said Santos Ltd., Australia's third-biggest oil and gas producer. These forms of gas make up about a third of the U.S.'s 24.5 trillion cubic feet of annual consumption and will become more important in Asia, David Knox, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Adelaide-based Santos, said today at an investor briefing. Santos may book its first unconventional gas resources this year, said Rick Wilkinson, vice-president of commercial operations.

Gas demand in eastern Australia may more than double in the next decade, driven by the introduction of carbon trading and the start-up of liquefied natural gas export projects in Queensland state, Santos said. Rising consumption will boost prices, said the company, operator of the Cooper Basin project, Australia's biggest onshore source of gas.

SMH - Passengers miss the bus again

THE devil is in the detail - especially in a NSW budget. The State Government has trumpeted record spending on public transport, including funding for 150 new articulated buses to soak up growing demand on the State Transit network. And yet a close look at the budget papers reveals there is insufficient funding for even one new government bus in the coming financial year.

A week ago, the Premier, Morris Iemma, described the $112 million spending on 150 new buses as "sensible planning" to "meet the inevitable growth that will come as Sydney grows and petrol prices rise". But just $100,000 has been allocated for 2008-09 for "new buses for passenger growth for State Transit Authority". An articulated bus costs more than $600,000 on the road.

SMH - The slow-moving Tuesday shuffle for 'cheap' petrol

THE queue begins at 6am and remains until the pumps close at midnight - a slow-moving stream of resigned faces. Known for being among the cheapest petrol stations in Sydney, the Caltex servo on the Hume Highway at Chullora attracts scores of motorists every Tuesday.

At 5.05pm, 25 cars are lined up waiting to pay $1.48 a litre. Locals regularly wait up to half an hour for a saving of about $4 to $5 a tank. "It's like this every Tuesday, without fail," said 24-year-old Joanne Michalotoulos. By 5.30pm cars have begun spewing out of the driveway onto the Hume Highway, causing considerable traffic congestion and creating a safety hazard in the wet greasy conditions.

SMH - We need tough love, not bad parenting

But in the moral cowardice department, our truly adept practitioners, our mentors and role models, are at the top. Note, after the first stupid fuss, the abject political silence on the Henson case. They know nudity isn't pornography, but they tuck their honour behind their populist tut-tutting and stay low. More urgent and abysmal still is the fuel-price fiasco. Kevin Rudd's obvious riposte is that one promise broken is actually another promise kept: what looks like abandonment of the fuel-price promise is actually adherence to the climate-change promise. High fuel prices are the best thing that could happen to us. The higher the better. Rudd knows it, but he won't say it.

The truth is that fuel is like food. Our capacity to suck calories from nature began as survival but custom and convenience have made us wildly, self-destructively profligate in this pursuit. Of course, food is fuel. It is no accident that food and fuel prices are now soaring, together and in parallel, across the globe. Peak oil and population pressure, long dreaded, are here. Fossil fuels, even in the production of food, worsen climate change, making food harder to extract, requiring more fuel and so on. Vicious circle.

The Australian - Santos in NSW coal seam methane gas find

OIL and gas producer Santos has announced potential coal-seam methane resources in NSW to rival Australia's biggest offshore find and says it is considering exporting them as liquefied natural gas. Santos, whose shares have been running hot after it secured an unexpectedly high price last week for Queensland CSM reserves from Malaysia's Petronas, said yesterday it had 40 trillion cubic feet of potential resources at its Gunnedah Basin, near the town of the same name.

The Australian - Apache announces force majeure on its gas supply contracts

APACHE Energy has declared force majeure on gas supply contracts after an explosion forced the closure of its Varanus gas plant.
The fire at the Western Australian plant marks the second time this year that an incident at a major gas plant has sparked serious shortages in WA, raising concerns about the state's heavy reliance on two key gas suppliers.

The Australian - Dampier Bunbury gas pipeline expansion all set

The Australian - Anderson is confident about gas, naturally

FORMER deputy prime minister John Anderson has big plans for coal seam gas minnow Eastern Star Gas. The company will become "a very, very big player on the east coast, and in particular the biggest in NSW, because of where we are", says Mr Anderson, who is chairman of Eastern Star Gas. "The fact is, we have location, location, location. There is very little NSW-sourced gas."