News.com.au - Greens attack fuel excise cut

"The best thing the Government could do for Australia is to use the fuel excise to invest in public transport," Senator Milne said.

The Australian - Nelson backs ETS fuel excise cut

PLANS to include petrol in an emissions trading scheme, but with a cut in the fuel excise to offset a cost increase, have won support from Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson.

But Dr Nelson says the excise cuts should be permanent, not temporary, as the Rudd Government has proposed.

Reuters - Australia considers first new coal port in 25 years

CANBERRA, July 15 (Reuters) - Australia's Queensland state is considering new coal mines and the country's first new export terminal in 25 years, investments that could increase shipments from the world's largest exporter of the commodity by 40 percent.

Bloomberg - West Australia Restarts Collie to Ease Gas Shortage

Western Australia, generator of more than a third of the nation's exports, restarted the state's biggest power station late yesterday, helping to ease a gas shortage that may cost A$6.7 billion ($6.4 billion).

The coal-fired Collie Power Station, able to produce 330 megawatts of electricity, will reduce the shortfall triggered by a June 3 explosion that damaged pipelines at Apache Corp.'s plant on Varanus Island, state Energy Minister Francis Logan said in a statement today.

The Age - Aussie oil, gas industry 'could suffer'

Investment in Australia's oil and gas industry could decline as companies that provide drilling, engineering and construction services reallocate their skills to work with national oil companies, a survey says.

National oil companies are shifting from allowing foreign ownership of reserves to utilising service contracts, as the price of oil increases, according to a survey by professional services firm KPMG.

International service companies now have the opportunity to expand their business model from being specialist contractors to operating entire projects on behalf of national oil companies.

"In the context of the global oil and gas industry, Australia is a small component, and if service companies reallocate their resources to large NOC [national oil companies] opportunities and projects, the potential exists that the Australian industry will suffer," KPMG's Brent Steedman said.

The Age - Plan trashed as $7bn down a hole

IF SIR Rod Eddington's $7 billion rail tunnel is built, the Brumby Government will have used the largest infrastructure investment in Australia's history to mask its incompetence, and that of rail operator Connex, a public transport advocate says.

Sir Rod's proposed rail tunnel from Footscray to Caulfield was not needed, and would be built only if mistruths were

believed, RMIT transport planning lecturer Paul Mees said in his submission to the Government's Eddington review.

Sir Rod and the Government's transport department argue the tunnel must be built because the rail system is approaching capacity.

But Dr Mees said overcrowding was occurring on Melbourne's trains because there had been a 25% increase in peak-hour passengers over the past five years but almost no increase in peak-hour trains.

Regular announcements of extra trains by the Government were "pure spin", Dr Mees said, because all but a handful were either added to off-peak periods or were extensions of existing services.

NZ Herald - Cost of train work alarms local body politicians

Auckland transport politicians are alarmed that their region's share of almost $1.9 billion of rail improvements will be at least five times higher than the local cost of upgrading Wellington's trains.

NZ Herald Brian Fallow: The price of keeping lights on

It looks like the winter power scare has passed. What a relief.

We also learned this week that consumer electricity prices have risen 6.6 per cent over the past year. Over the past five years the average increase has been 5.5 per cent.

But evidently these relentless rising power bills have not brought us a more secure electricity supply.

We go through this drama just about every other year: 2001, 2003, 2006 and again this year.

A distant observer, perhaps one contemplating investment in New Zealand, could be forgiven for thinking the electricity supply hangs by a thread.

Energy Minister David Parker says it is ridiculous to describe the recent rains which have replenished the hydro lakes (though they remain well below average) as lucky.

"We don't criticise farmers for planting crops in the expectation of rain and sunshine. Likewise we do expect rain to fall and fill our hydro lakes on a yearly basis," he said.

Radio NZ - Petrol, food rises push inflation to 4%

ABC - Emission trading revenue should go back to households: Origin

The company planning to build a gas-fired power station at Mortlake says revenue raised through an emissions trading scheme must be funnelled towards households.

The Age - How to reduce emissions?

[For] Professor Jeffrey Sachs the timing was perfect; for Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong, it was somewhat less so. The economic adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon breezed into Canberra's Australian National University this week to announce that emissions trading - the Rudd Government's biggest weapon in the fight against dangerous climate change - was, in effect, a dud. It was, he said, messy, complicated and bound to be unpopular.

"It's such a mess administratively. It covers only a fraction of what needs to be covered. It's hard to implement, it's hard to monitor, it's not transparent, it's highly manipulative - which is why the banks love it," he said.