May 22, 2014
A report coming from Bloomberg News says British Columbia should learn from Australia’s policy missteps to avoid a finance disaster “if it wants to establish itself as a source of liquefied natural gas for Asia.”
These comments come from Petroliam Nasional Bhd. Chief Executive Officer, Shamsul Azhar Abbas.
Petronas, Mayasia’s state oil and gas company, is among energy producers hoping to build gas shipping terminals on Canada’s Pacific Coast, but is weary of the cost overruns Chevron Corp. and BG Group Plc. have been hit with at their Australian LNG projects.
Australia has about A$200 billion in LNG ventures under construction. Although this puts the country on a course to surpass Qatar as the world’s biggest supplier of the fuel, they still have A$180 billion of potential investment under threat due to high costs and increasing competition, says an industry lobby group.
“Australia introduced ‘severe fiscal and regulatory policies’ that added to the cost of doing business and negatively affected project economics there,” the report reads.