The latest forward view of Australian Wholesale Energy Prices out to 2027 show prices for East Coast consumption will remain at nose-bleed levels out as far as 2027, according to data from the Australian Energy market.
There is a reason for this, in that marginal wholesale power prices are remarkably set based on the cost of gas, via LNG in the international markets. This will pressure get worse as coal fired generation is retired across Australia.
Governments of various flavours have messed up here from a policy perspective, in that a small number of international operators are the Australian gas cartel of Santos, Woodside, Origin, Shell, Exxon and friends.
The Governments latest solution to the high price of power, was to set a policy price cap of $12 a gigajoule in the domestic market that is unless cartel members meet certain exemptions such as investing in new gas projects.
That $12 cap was set after receiving warnings from Treasury that energy prices were set to soar by about 50 per cent over 2023 and the first half of 2024. As a result of the intervention, power prices were reduced, by an estimated $230 dollars a year, which is mere chicken feed, given the massive run up in price. Estimates are the average household bill will rise by $700 by mid-2024 compared to June 2022, based on Treasury figures. And In practice the $12 cap is behaving as a floor, as the cartel ships more gas offshore.
All of this means that China who can often on-sells the gas to Europe at a healthy profit, is still seeing cheaper gas prices than in Australia!
The solution of course is for the Government to increase the local reservation and reduce the price cap (floor). But that would bring them up against the political and economic powers of the gas cartel.
So the bottom line is that Australian East Coast households are being taken to the cleaners, one reason why costs of living are so high, while local manufacturers are being priced out, and reducing the capacity for local production.
Which begs the question is this simple stupidity, or something much worse. Who really are pulling the economic strings in the country? Game of Mates anyone?
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