Vast resources of offshore natural gas will provide the mainstay of Australia's energy mix over the next century, as well as helping to curb greenhouse emissions.

Leading energy researchers from the Bureau of Resource Sciences (BRS) and CSIRO Petroleum Resources acknowledge that Australia's oil self-sufficiency will come under pressure over the next few decades.

But they are quick to point to the potential to come from oil shale and from technological breakthroughs which could see the production of transport fuels from natural gas, especially if oil prices rise.

"The Australian outlook for gas production is enormous," says Dr Paul E. Williamson, Petroleum Director of BRS. "We already have seven super-giant fields - two developed and five undeveloped - well over a hundred years' supply at current production rates. And there are significant undiscovered resources, particularly in the Carnarvon Basin."

"There is also the as-yet unquantified potential of resources in the deep water off Western Australia, the Great Australian Bight, the Lord Howe Rise and the Kerguelen Plateau," Dr Williamson said.

"For remote offshore gas, especially in deeper water, the great challenge is to convert it into a highly valuable product, such as high quality distillates for use in the transport sector," says Dr Adrian Williams, Chief of CSIRO Petroleum Resources.

"Transport is tied to oil at present. However, as world oil production costs rise, breakthroughs in membrane technology to separate oxygen from air and new catalysts are creating the potential to convert gas to valuable liquid fuels.

"The industry is now talking about the potential to do this on offshore platforms and on floating production and processing vessels," he says.

"That's the big hit for Australia -- the offshore conversion of natural gas to liquid fuel. The technology to achieve it is already well on this side of the horizon. This technology has the potential to drive our energy future."

The move to turn natural gas into liquid fuels opens up another market opportunity alongside LNG and pipeline sales to urban and industrial centres and will bring with it additional benefits, Dr Williams and Dr Williamson say.

Among them is a significant contribution to energy independence for Australia for at least another 100 years, based on an enormous and, so far, largely untapped resources. BRS estimates we have already found 116 years' worth of gas at current domestic demand levels and anticipates we will uncover nearly half as much again within the next 25 years in known petroleum provinces of the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

And the move, seen by many as inevitable, away from coal and oil and towards use of natural gas as a primary energy source will also help to curb greenhouse emissions.

"The heart of our national energy future will depend on what we do with natural gas," Dr Williams says.

Dr Williams and colleague Mr David Collins of the Australian Petroleum Co-operative Research Centre are the authors of a paper on the future of Australia's energy industry to be presented to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering 1997 Energy Symposium in Sydney today (Tuesday, November 25, 1997).

More information:
Dr Paul Williamson, Bureau of Resource Sciences 02 6272 5342
Dr Adrian Williams, CSIRO Petroleum Resources 0418 585 803
Mr David Collins, Australian Petroleum CRC 02 9490 8985

Copies of Dr Williams' and Mr Collins' paper are available by phoning 02 9490 8985