Energy News has learned Jemena has received approvals from the Commonwealth and Queensland, and expects to have the final approval from the Northern Territory in the bag within days.
The federal Department of the Environment and Energy announced that the NGP had been approved with conditions.
Jemena made final investment decision in about the fourth quarter of 2015 as part of a competitive tender process, and some 10% of the steel has already been delivered.
"Jemena welcomes the Commonwealth government's environmental approval of the Northern Gas Pipeline, and is confident it can meet the conditions specified in the approval notice," a Jemena spokesperson told Energy News.
"Jemena has previously secured environmental approval from the Queensland government for the project, and confirms final environmental approval from the Northern Territory government is currently with the responsible minister for consideration."
Energy News also understands that the proponent is confident that gas from existing undeveloped and uncommitted offshore conventional sources will eventually underpin the pipeline's operations, with future sources of gas depending on the outcome of the NT government's review into hydraulic fracturing.
The news comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a meeting of LNG producers in Canberra tomorrow to talk about how or if they can supply gas from their megaprojects in Queensland to rescue the domestic market.
The meeting was called as AGL Energy said it could not supply further domestic gas needs and the Australian Energy Market Operator projected that a decline in gas production could result in a gas-powered electricity generation shortfall of between about 80 gigawatt hours and 363GWh in 2018-19 and 2020-21 for Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
Queensland's LNG projects and state and territory-based moratoria have led to an increase of $2/gigajoule in wholesale prices for industrial customers using gas which the competition regulator says could lead to a reduction in consumption by 20 PJpa (about 8.6%) as operations close due to price shock.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims told a conference in Sydney today that while the regulator had been optimistic that the decision by NT's government to construct the NGP to connect the Territory with the east coast gas market would potentially bring new gas supply into the east coast, "this is now uncertain".
Pipeline regulation
Sims also laid out the rationale for the regulator's push for pipeline regulation amid claims of monopolies at play, although industry lawyers have previously told Energy News there was scant evidence to support those claims.
Sims said the Gas Market Reform Group's work on pipeline transportation reforms was underway with changes to the pipeline regulatory framework to address the market power issues its inquiry identified.
"This is important work with, for example, the potential for it to assist with the unlocking of Northern Territory gas," he said.
AEMO's Gas Statement of Opportunity, released last week, identified NT gas, available via the NGP, as a potential source of new east coast supply that could alleviate almost entirely the energy regulator's forecast supply shortfall conditions from summer 2018/19 based on reserves available from the Amadeus Basin.
Central Petroleum has previously confirmed it has significant resources available to meet 2018-19 peak demand, which do not require fraccing.
Sims said interest in the NT "seems to be hotting up", with Origin Energy recently indicating it has very significant prospective resources in the Beetaloo Sub-basin.
Yet Central stated during the ACCC's inquiry that the "critical barrier to us selling [gas] into the east coast domestic market is the pricing for utilising existing pipelines".
Sims said gas will have to be transported to the east coast via the Amadeus to Darwin Pipeline, the NGP, the Carpentaria Gas Pipeline (CGP) and then either via the South West Queensland Pipeline, Moomba to Sydney Pipeline or Moomba to Adelaide Pipeline for supply into NSW, SA and Victoria.
Sims said those other pipelines were not subject to the same constraints as the NGP when setting prices or the terms and conditions of access, and the ACCC found that if tariffs on some of the major routes were 50% lower, the delivered price of gas in the southern states would fall by $1/GJ.
"For gas transported from the NT, which requires far more pipelines, the effect would be much more significant," Sims said.
"While some may question the assumption that tariffs would halve, it is consistent with internal documents provided by some pipeline operators and the ACCC's own analysis."
