Cue the scary headlines, warnings of catastrophic shortages and blackouts, and fearmongering by vested interests.
The way AEMO's data is interpreted misses one crucial fact: Australia has an abundance of gas, more than almost any other country on Earth.
In fact, we produce enough gas to supply Australian households and businesses many times over each year, with plenty left to export.
But the largely foreign-owned gas industry is allowed to sell 80 percent of Australia's gas overseas, at a massive profit, then claim we don't have enough here. The industry does this knowing that it can rely on certain supporters in the media to help sell its story.
Australia doesn't have a gas crisis. It has an integrity crisis.
Setting aside manufactured shortages, if you dig deeper into the AEMO statement, the warnings of "gas deficits" are for a worst-case scenario, like a string of freezing days during peak demand for gas-fired power generation. Even when something like that has happened in recent years, supply was not interrupted.
The statement uses questionable assumptions about gas consumption and demand, supported by unnecessarily dramatic quotes by AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman.
"AEMO increasing sounds like the boy who cried wolf, with repeated warnings of blackouts that practically never happen," said Stephen Long, Senior Fellow and Contributing Editor at The Australia Institute.
"The inevitable scary headlines and claims of a looming gas shortage or catastrophic supply shortfall unnecessarily frighten consumers who are already doing it tough.
"This is all done as cover for the gas industry to demand more and more gas expansion and to castigate any government which dares to stand in its way.
"There is so much we could do to avoid a domestic gas shortage, even while these foreign gas giants hold Australians to ransom.
"For example, we could upgrade the pipelines used to shift gas from the north to the south. We could increase the pace of electrification, so the nation is less reliant on climate-polluting fossil fuels.
We could reward industrial users and households which reduce gas consumption at peak times. And the government could finance the installation of smart technology which can turn off appliances for short periods when demand is very high.
"The AEMO statement advocates many of these measures. But that's less interesting than scary headlines about mythical crises."
