Thursday 3 July: New Market Forces analysis reveals fracking the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin would produce more than nine times the entire gas demand forecast for Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) for the next 25 years.
The report – Pipeline to Nowhere: APA Group’s dangerous bet on Beetaloo fracking – finds it would take Australia’s NEM a staggering 237 years to use the proposed Beetaloo fracked gas, making a mockery of claims by pipeline company, APA Group, that new gas fields like Beetaloo are needed to support Australia’s transition to net-zero by 2050.
The research also finds that Australia has more than enough gas for domestic consumption and the vast majority of Beetaloo’s gas would be shipped overseas. Less than two years (21 months) of liquefied natural gas exports from just Queensland alone would cover all demand the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) forecasts for Australian gas power generation in the NEM until 2050.
Will van de Pol, Chief Executive Officer, Market Forces said:
“Our analysis confirms that fracked gas from Beetaloo is not needed at all to power Australia and would lead to much higher electricity prices for consumers.”
“Over the past 10 years, despite east coast Australia more than doubling gas production, wholesale gas prices have more than quadrupled.”
“APA must stop gaslighting investors and Australian consumers, and drop its costly plans to unleash dangerous fracking in the Northern Territory.”
The research shows that Beetaloo gas is nearly three times as expensive as existing Queensland gas from Bowen and Surat reserves.
The new analysis also finds over the long term that the fracking company, Beetaloo Energy (formerly Empire Energy), wants to export 83 per cent of the gas it plans to produce from Beetaloo. Another Beetaloo fracking company, Tamboran Resources, has understated the amount of gas it would be exporting overseas, with well over 50 per cent to be shipped off our shores if the fracking proceeds as planned.
Meanwhile, domestic gas demand is dropping and AEMO’s demand projections may well be overstated. Electrification and renewable energy have contributed to a marked decline of more than 7 per cent in AEMO’s projected gas volumes for gas power generation in the NEM and the Northern Territory out to 2043, compared to last year’s projections.
The new Market Forces analysis finds that Australia’s biggest pipeline company, APA Group, faces an astronomical price tag of up to $4 billion to build a new large-scale Beetaloo to east coast gas pipeline, adding further costs that would be passed on to consumers on Australia’s east coast.
“The bottom line is that fracking Beetaloo is too expensive for consumers and would cost a bomb for our climate,” said Mr van de Pol.”
“The real goal of fracking Beetaloo is more gas exports at the expense of communities, groundwater and nature, undermining global climate goals and a safer future.”
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Antony Balmain, +61-423-253-477, [email protected]
Note to Editors:
Analysis Methodology
- To calculate the volume of gas required in the National Electricity Market (NEM) from 2025-2050 we used “As-generated generation (TWh)” forecasts from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)’s 2024 Integrated System Plan (ISP). The scenario selected was the Step Change scenario, as it was the scenario with the highest likelihood according to AEMO.
- Next, data was downloaded from AEMO’s Gas Statement of Opportunity 2025 (GSOO), which provided historical volumes of gas (PJ) used for gas power generation in the NEM. The volume of gas was converted from PJ to TJ. Then, data was downloaded from Open Electricity which provided historical gas power generation in the NEM over the past 4 years (2021 to 2024) in GWh. Next, the TJ figure was divided by the actual gas power generation in GWh to get an average volume of gas in TJ per GWh figure over the 4 year period. The factor used was 9.95TJ/GWh. This factor was comparable to industry sources such as the Australian Energy Council.
- This average volume of gas in TJ per GWh figure was then applied to AEMO’s “As-generated generation” figures from the 2024 ISP (this totalled 242.8 TWh over the period 2025-2050). This figure was converted into PJ, being ~2416 PJ. This represents an estimate of gas required for gas power generation in the NEM in AEMO’s Step Change outlook from the period of 2025 to 2050 (25 years).
- This volume of gas was then compared to the following[1]:
- Queensland’s LNG exports (July 2023 to May 2025) 45.8 Mt (~2231 PJ) + LNG plant own gas use for this LNG (~214 PJ). LNG own plant use was estimated by developing a factor for gas used (PJ) per PJ of LNG produced. We used data from the Australian Energy Update 2024 provided by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, which totalled 4541 PJ of LNG exports and 435 PJ of LNG own plant use in 2022-2023.
- Beetaloo Energy and Tamboran’s lifetime production estimates (~22930 PJ).
- Conversions of different units of measurement were based on BP’s ‘approximate conversion factors’.
- To estimate gas demand for Australia’s east coast gas market, we used AEMO’s 2025 Gas Statement of Opportunities (GSOO 2025) forecasts for Industrial and Residential/Commercial (extended to 2050 based on average YoY changes during the 2025 to 2044 forecast period) and Market Forces’ estimates of Gas Power Generation gas use based on AEMO’s 2024 Integrated System Plan (ISP 2024). ISP 2024 was used for gas power generation estimates rather than the GSOO 2025, as the ISP provides an outlook until 2052, is a whole-of-system plan and according to AEMO 2025 GSOO gas power forecasts only “differ marginally to those presented in the 2024 ISP report.”
- We used Tamboran’s forecasts to compare against those provided by AEMO. Tamboran’s forecasts indicate it intends to supply Australia’s east coast domestic gas market with 1 billion cubic feet (1.019PJ) of Beetaloo gas per day for 20 years, starting in 2028-2030.
[1] Note conversions used BP conversion factors: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2022-approximate-conversion-factors.pdf