The Malinauskas Labor Government has secured a long-term domestic gas supply agreement with Santos, ensuring gas currently sold overseas will instead be used in South Australia to help underpin the industrial transformation of our state.
The South Australian Strategic Gas Reserve will see Santos supply 20 petajoules of gas each year for 10 years from 2030, the equivalent of a third of the state’s entire annual gas usage across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
This is gas currently sold to overseas markets, which will now instead stay in South Australia for industrial use. To put the magnitude of the agreement into perspective, the volume of gas to be provided each year is higher than the average annual use of all of South Australia’s residential and commercial customers combined.
Access to reliable and competitively priced gas is vital to the transformation of steelmaking in Whyalla. This agreement locks in the future of the Cooper Basin and will see hundreds of millions of dollars invested in exploration and production in South Australia over the next 15 years. The gas will be supplied at a competitive long-term price, providing the certainty required to unlock major private investment as part of the sale and transformation of the Whyalla Steelworks and support the transition to lower carbon steelmaking.
This agreement also supports South Australia’s energy transition. Natural gas will continue to play a significant role, and the Malinauskas Labor Government is committed to ensuring our energy system retains dispatchable short, medium and long-term capacity to underpin the renewable energy transition.
