In the west the State Government has announced around $100 million in concessions to speed up the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline sales process.

Local energy minister Eric Ripper has been pushing for a quick sale of the key asset for a number of months now but has been continually frustrated by delays in data acquisition and bidder demands.

Now the government has offered to circumvent the massive $100 million stamp duty bill attached to the sale to secure final offers by the August 27 deadline. It is ultimately hoped the savings will be re-invested into urgent expansions on the pipeline to meet increasing demand in the state’s south west.

Western Power has already mooted its own $100 million assistance package for expansion if the sale process drags on too much longer.

Meanwhile in the Sunshine State of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie continues to lay down the law to the state's electricity supply sector, calling for greater capital investment and singling out less-than-satisfactory performances from Energex and Ergon.

This follows Beattie’s blast after the report - Electricity Distribution and Service Delivery For The 21st Century – painted a less than satisfactory picture of power supply in the state.

"The report basically says the reliability of supply is not good enough," the premier said. "It says Energex and Ergon need to improve the reliability of supply to Queenslanders."

Beattie said despite Energex and Ergon lifting their capital works expenditure in the recent Budget by almost 50% to $1 billion next year (2004/2005), it was obvious that more money would need to be spent.

"If extra money is required to upgrade the system then it will be made available by the government.”

Alternative measures are now being considered to avert any shortages over summer with Energex proposing to access the standby generation capacity of Brisbane CBD buildings during periods of peak electricity demand which would help improve reliability of supply to customers.

Energy minister Stephen Robertson said all large commercial city buildings have standby generators which sit idle for 99.9% of the time.

"Last summer Queensland broke its daily electricity consumption record six times and the lights stayed on."

"By accessing this spare generating capacity during periods of peak demand we can further ease pressure on the CBD electricity grid and improve the reliability of supply."

Robertson said Energex is proposing a pilot CBD project only involving the Central Plaza 1 and 2 buildings.