CANBERRA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has approved new gas exploration in waters off the country's south and west coasts.
Madeleine King, the Minister for Resources, on Tuesday announced the government has approved permits for Esso - a subsidiary of ExxonMobil - and Australian company Beach Energy to establish new offshore gas wells in waters lying between the southern states of Victoria, South Australia (SA) and Tasmania.
Any gas discovered will be used to support Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), which supplies power to Victoria, SA and Tasmania as well as New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
King also said the government will finalize new exploration permits for resources companies operating off Australia's west coast to support energy security in Western Australia (WA).
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) in June issued a warning of an immediate threat to gas supplies in Australia's southeastern states amid a snap of cold weather, lulls in renewable energy production and an outage at a major gas plant.
A separate report from AEMO in March said that the southeastern states would face a major shortfall of gas supplies from 2028 as supply falls faster than demand. Australia is one of the world's largest producers of liquid natural gas (LNG) but the majority of extracted gas is contracted for export.
King said in a statement on Tuesday that domestic supply issues could persist until the mid-2030s unless new sources of gas supply are developed.
The governing Labor Party has set targets to have 82 percent of Australia's electricity come from renewable sources by 2030 and to reach economy-wide net zero emissions by 2050.
"As ageing coal generation comes offline in coming years, gas will continue to be needed to firm renewable energy generation and as a backup during peak energy use periods," King said.
"Gas is critical for the transition. But it will be a diminishing proportion of our energy mix to 2050 as other storage technologies come online."
Additionally, King announced that the government is in the process of approving 10 permits to explore carbon capture and storage (CCS) - a process that involves storing greenhouse gas emissions underground. ■
