Of course they are because owning them has now become very profitable as the price has risen. Most of this new gas is destined for the LNG export market. Australians will have to line up to buy the gas at world parity pricing just like everyone else.

None of this stuff can be used as a liquid fuel without Fischer-Tropsch processing which is expensive. It makes far more sense for Australia to export gas and import oil than to try to convert what we've got. What we do need to do however is get the price of our gas up to oil equivalency and that time may not be too far off.

I agree Boof, CNG would make much more sense and if we were starting from a low vehicle fleet base with large growth forecast, we would probably be investigating the same things. We are however a mature vehicle owning country and shifting Aussies mindsets from large comfy air-conditioend cars that can go 600Ks on a single fill, to having to recharge in the garage over night to get maybe 60ks the next day is going to take a fair bit of convincing. To the average Indian or Pakistani, a CNG car would be an absolute luxury.

I would advocate that we use cars much less than we currently do, regardless of what we run them on. Farm machinery is a different priority.