Cold weather and an unplanned outage at Victoria’s Longford plant prompted the Australian Energy Market Operator to warn of gas shortages.Cold weather and an unplanned outage at Victoria’s Longford plant prompted the Australian Energy Market Operator to warn of gas shortages.Market Operator was explaining why it had issued a “threat notice” that warned gas could be disrupted if supplies ran low.
“Senior citizens don’t know if they should eat tonight, or turn the heater on,” O’Brien said, adding the energy system was in “dire trouble”. Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s energy minister, said “Aemo is confident that the east coast gas market will have enough gas to get through winter”. The electricity market already rewards big users who power down to avoid blackouts during peak load periods. A similar scheme looks likely for gas as governments must ensure households with gas heaters can use them, particularly in winter.“The big gas companies are driven by the export volume, not by the domestic market”, with about three-quarters of eastern Australian gas earmarked for exports, he says.
Market analysts, though, doubt extra supplies from sites such as Narrabri in NSW would ever be large enough to make a material difference to global prices.Ashleigh Madden, a communications meteorologist at Weatherzone who advises energy clients, says a “really high pressure” system sitting over southern Australia in autumn had likely been a one-in-4,000-year event. It resulted in long stints of calm weather, reducing output from windfarms and contributing to greater gas use.