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Gold/Mining/Energy : Lundin Oil (LOILY, LOILB Sweden) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (1896)	11/13/2000 8:59:46 PM
From: Tomas	Respond to of 2742

Australian Natural Gas Use Increases Share After 5-Year Slide By Stephen Wisenthal Canberra, Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Australia's natural gas industry said a rise in the fuel's share of the country's energy use, after low electricity and coal prices caused demand growth to slump for five years, is the beginning of 15 years of gains. Natural gas accounted for 18.1 percent of the country's total energy use in the year ended June 1999, Abare, the government's commodity forecaster, said in a report released today. This is an increase from 18.0 percent in 1997-98, though still lower than 19 percent in 1993-94. The proportion of primary energy coming from natural gas is now set to rise to 22 percent by 2005, said the Australian Gas Association. It will be buoyed by increased use for power generation, and demand from projects to process minerals ranging from aluminum to zinc. ``The natural gas industry can make the targets it has set, of 28.9 percent of primary energy consumption by 2014-15,'' association chairman Phil Harvey said at its annual conference in Canberra. Australia has enough natural gas, much of it off the country's northern and western coasts, to last at least 100 years at current rates of consumption. The industry sells about A$6 billion ($3 billion) of natural gas each year, with A$4 billion from domestic consumptions, and a further A$2 billion exported as liquefied natural gas, almost all to Japan. The gas association, which represents producers, distributors and retailers of gas, and the companies providing goods and services to them, six years ago predicted increases in the share of gas in primary energy use in Australia. Those hopes were dashed as electricity prices slumped in New South Wales and Victoria, the country's two most populous states. That electricity price decline, prompted by deregulation, and the sale of the state-owned electricity industry in Victoria, is now ending, as demand catches up with supply, said Harvey. Growth Absorbed ``With the privatization of the (coal-fired) power stations in Victoria, the new owners needed to maximize their use to get their money back,'' he said. ``But when that growth has been absorbed ... then we'll see gas being used increasingly for power generation in Victoria and New South Wales.'' Burning natural gas produces less air pollution than other fuels. It creates about half the carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated, compared with coal. The Abare report showed that oil accounted for 34.6 percent of Australia's energy use in 1998-99, high-quality black coal 28.1 percent, natural gas 18.1 percent, and renewable sources 13.3 percent. So-called brown coal, which has a low energy content but is cheap to mine, provided 13.3 percent of the country's energy, mostly in Victoria, where several large power stations use the fuel. quote.bloomberg.com