Australia's own goal

While Australia enjoys an LNG export boom, it's also looking at imports as one way of meeting domestic demand

Australia is poised to oust Qatar from the top spot as the world's largest liquefied natural gas exporter. Yet the country's populous and gas-rich eastern region is facing soaring prices, tightening supply and potential caps on LNG sales. The cause is a mix of policy failures and market forces which have combined to create a perfect storm over eastern Australia's gas industry. This, in turn, threatens the economic viability of heavy industry, pushing up household power bills, risking blackouts and causing a political headache for the federal government. In response, plans are afoot to import LNG into Australia for the first time, or even to pipe gas from fields in Western Australia. Aside fr