Check against delivery

Good afternoon everyone, it’s great to be with you.

I’d like to start by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which we are joined together today.

First Nations people have taken care of our lands and waterways for the past 60,000 years, and I recognise and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Walter Wriston, the long serving CEO of Citibank, famously said, “capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.”

Late last month, APA announced a ~$500 million investment to address bottlenecks in our east coast gas network.

This investment is critical for Australian businesses and consumers.

It will help address the gas supply shortfalls projected for our southern states later this decade.

But the truth is, we should have pulled the trigger on the investment at least 12 months ago.

Why the delay? Quite simply, we couldn’t make such an investment when there was so much uncertainty, from a policy perspective, surrounding Australia’s gas market.

Why did we finally pull the trigger to make the investment?

We made our investment off the back of the Federal Government’s December 2025 Gas Market Review Final Report, which provided clarity that our government will support and favour domestic gas supply market to meet domestic demand.

The Gas Market Review Final Report turned the runway lights on to enable this critical investment.

The Final Report also builds on the Government’s 2024 Future Gas Strategy, recognising the critical role that gas plays in our economy – both for industry, and as an essential part of the energy transition.

It recognises the need to prioritise Australian gas for Australians, via a domestic gas reservation scheme. It highlights the need for regulatory reform to put downward pressure on gas prices and ensure energy security and energy independence for our country.

These are all positive signals for our industry.

In this context, there are three things I want to cover today:

• First: The evidence showing that domestic gas supply should not be a constraint to meet demand.
• Second: The importance of energy independence, and the chaos created by the ongoing discussions about alternatives to a domestic solution, and 
• Third: What is needed to close out the Gas Market Review to deliver reliable and affordable energy for Australian businesses and households.

Let’s start by laying out the facts about domestic gas supply...

Over 71,000 petajoules of 2P reserves and 2C resources are available in eastern Australia to serve an east coast domestic market that consumes around 500 petajoules each year. Add to that around 1,000 petajoules a year for exported LNG we have enough gas under our feet to deliver energy security and economic prosperity for Australians, for the next 45 years.

Victoria’s energy basins are in decline. That is clear.

But between Queensland and the Northern Territory, there is enough gas in the ground to support both our east coast domestic market, and our Asian LNG export customers, for decades to come.

We must ensure policy settings incentivise their development for the benefit of all Australians.

You can see on the chart an example of what we are doing at APA, to bring new basins to life.

These are our plans for the Beetaloo Basin. We are confident that gas can be delivered to southern markets cost effectively. And we expect the Basin will also be a boon for Australia’s LNG export market.

Gas is essential for industry, and increasingly, critical in supporting the energy transition. The demand for gas in Australia is robust. Demand is not the issue. The debate is almost always about supply.

Gas supply is not a constraint to supporting a healthy domestic gas market and LNG export market. We just need the right incentives to produce it.

And APA is leaning in to ensure that gas transportation and storage infrastructure is also not a constraint.

We will be undertaking this work in two parts...

Final investment decision has been reached on Stage 3A, with an investment of $260 million dollars to deliver three new compressors. 
This will increase north-to-south capacity by 11%, including a 20% increase in capacity for northern gas into Victoria. And it will be ready by winter 2028.

Compression is an incredibly efficient way to address bottlenecks and bring more volumes to market. They can be delivered quickly and cost effectively. They have been the solution that helped deliver 25% of additional capacity to our east coast grid under Stages 1 and 2 of our expansion program.

We’re also investing $220 million dollars in Stage 3B to enable continued early works and procurement of long lead items for the Bulloo Interlink.

Final investment decision for 3B will be subject to conducive policy settings and further progress with the Gas Market Review.

Sensible policy and stable regulatory environments drive investment. Assuming the Gas Market Review delivers the right framework for investment, APA will deliver the Bulloo Interlink.

Once Stages 3A and 3B are complete, APA will have added approximately 30% of new capacity to the north to south transport corridor. This will build on the 25% increase already delivered by APA over the last few years.

So by 2029, we expect to have increased north to south transport capacity by more than 50% through an investment of around $1.5 billion. This is an incredibly cost effective transport solution, driven by our ability to incrementally expand our network.

In so far that policy settings are conducive, APA will keep addressing future predicted bottlenecks in the 2030s by ongoing, incremental investment in transport and storage infrastructure.

Now for Topic 2. The consequences of a reliance on global markets for our energy supply.

Everyone in this room is aware of the very real impact the escalating conflict in the Middle East has had on global energy markets.

This is a stark reminder of the need for Australia to maintain its energy independence.

Energy independence has played a critical role in shaping Australia’s history and prosperity, and it must continue to be the hallmark of our future.

Energy independence has kept Australia’s industry alive. It has delivered low cost energy for consumers. And it has driven gas to be one of Australia’s largest export contributors.

Almost 90 per cent of the gas consumed domestically supports Australia’s key industries. Our economy is dependent on us making the right choices as it relates to gas policy.

Subsidies would be the only foreseeable way to sustainably deliver LNG imports at a lower cost than domestic gas. And any subsidy is ultimately borne by Australian taxpayers and consumers.

Common sense should tell us that we should never rely on offshore markets for a product that sits right under our feet.

This slide is an illustrative cost estimate for landed LNG imports into Victoria, in winter 2025, relative to the cost of domestic gas.

It takes the Asian spot price and adds the shipping, regassification, foreign exchange and local transport costs that would be incurred if we were to import gas into Australia.

It doesn’t take into account the uncertainty around supply routes, which has been on full display over the past few weeks.

The outcome - an 83% higher average cost. That was prior to the current conflict in the Middle East, which has sent LNG spot prices skyrocketing. 
Fast forward to today - landed domestic gas prices into Victoria averaged $8.99 a gigajoule during March. That’s in Australian dollars.

Contrast this to spot LNG prices in Asia, which have averaged $11.82 US dollars a gigajoule over the past two years and rose to an average of over $20 US dollars a gigajoule over the last few weeks. Again, this is all before the additional shipping, regassification and foreign exchange costs that would be incurred to deliver the gas into Australia.

You can see on this chart that Rystad’s long term forecasts also suggest prices out to the 2040s will remain roughly double that of domestic prices.

I’ve been advised that Rystad has updated these long term forecasts today, to an even higher price.

It begs the questions - why am I standing here, addressing the risk of dependency on an LNG import market?

The answer is - uncertainty around potential support for LNG import terminals is putting the brakes on long term supply contracts between gas producers and gas suppliers. They are waiting in hope of a subsidy.

The market needs clarity that domestic gas supply is the solution we need to avoid a future energy crisis in Australia.

We can’t leave the door open for people to play games with our energy markets, with the hope they can profit from the inevitable market dislocation that will be created if we subsidise import terminals.

It will create chaos, putting further pressure on energy affordability, and sabotage Australia’s energy independence.

As a cautionary tale of what happens when you become beholden to LNG imports, it’s worth looking at the UK.

Britain has saddled its economy with some of the highest energy prices in the world, due to low domestic gas storage capacity and the reliance on imported LNG for electricity generation.

From an already high base, prices in the UK’s gas market almost doubled in the days following the start of the conflict in Iran.

This will inevitably flow through to their electricity prices in the coming months.

We cannot afford this outcome in Australia, and it would be even more absurd here, given the abundance of gas right under our feet.

So let’s bring our focus back to the domestic market.

Committing to a gas reservation scheme that ensures sufficient gas is supplied into the domestic market will also help improve the investment environment for long term infrastructure. This is Topic 3.

In Western Australia, where a reservation has been in place since 2006, gas prices have averaged around $5.91 per gigajoule over the last three months. The Victorian gas price has been $10.47 per gigajoule over the same period. Looking back further, gas prices in WA have been, on average, 50% lower than gas prices in Victoria over the past 5 years.

Closing out the east coast reservation scheme will be a significant step towards restoring the market confidence required for investment in gas infrastructure in Australia.

But the potential for market intervention still clouds us.

An example is the proposed powers enabling Australia’s Energy Market Operator to underwrite gas supply options.

Let me be clear... AEMO plays a critical role in our energy market and they do a great job.

But these proposed powers could discourage the long-term investment so desperately needed.

Why?

Because it’s almost impossible to make long term infrastructure investments when there’s the potential for intervention – where someone else can take control of your destiny.

Would any of us in this room make an investment, such as buying a house, if you knew that someone else could intervene and impact the economics of your investment?

While we continue to move slowly, we are at least moving in the right direction.

That said, we can’t afford to reach what we think is the finish line, only to be told we have more laps to go. We need the Federal Government to close this out quickly.

To conclude...

Domestic gas supply is not a constraint and transportation of that supply is no longer a constraint.

APA is delivering the required east coast gas transport capacity to meet demand. We will continue to expand in the future so that supply can meet demand.

When the policy signals are there to attract and welcome capital, the private sector can get on with delivering what’s needed.

The last piece of this puzzle, right now, is the introduction of a well-designed domestic gas reservation, so Australia’s domestic gas market can get back to what it does best – powering Australian homes and driving Australian industry.