Taps turn on QGC's Charlie

THE Queensland Resources Council (QRC) has welcomed the decision by Shell’s $1.7 billion QGC project Charlie to inject up to an additional 90 petajoules (PJ) of natural gas annually to Australian homes, businesses and LNG customers.

QRC Chief Executive Ian Macfarlane said the announcement coincided with the opening of Charlie in the Surat Basin which includes gas wells, pipelines and a gas compression station.

“Charlie created 1600 regional jobs during construction and today’s announcement will see enough natural gas flowing from the project to meet close to half of Queensland’s daily demand,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“Charlie is yet another example of a successful investment into regional Queensland by the resources sector, where state and local governments and farmers support the gas industry, resulting in massive economic benefits for local and state governments as well as farmers and rural and regional communities.

“Queensland’s neighbours must take a leaf out of our book, instead of relying on our state to meet the gap caused by their failure to develop their own gas industries. Gas exploration has stalled in New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory, despite the fact all jurisdictions have their own reserves in the ground.

“According to the ACCC’s own data one PJ is enough gas to supply Wollongong or Penrith or one large industry user for a whole year.

“Shell’s QGC business will add $1.2 billion to the Chinchilla economy over the next 25 years and state wide the gas industry’s contribution to Queensland in 2016/17 was $8.9 billion, supporting 42,938 jobs and spending $3.4 billion in local businesses and community organisations.”

www.qrc.org.au

ends