Beet-a-who? The Beetaloo is Australia's answer to global energy demand

A world-wide energy shortage threatens to cover our climate change response under a smoke screen.

Today let's take a trip into the wilds of the Northern Territory outback to have closer look at one such example.

Have a close look at the top photograph which was taken in 2019 in the mostly uninhabited eastern part of the NT, near the Queensland border.

This is the Beetaloo basin, Australia's supposed El Dorado, where enough gas lies trapped in the shale rocks deep underground to supply the country for hundreds of years.

Lots of money has already been spent making sure that's true, and early drilling suggests the gas is indeed there in these vast quantities.

Australia is already good at extracting its natural wealth, and the federal government decided early on the Beetaloo was ripe for the plucking.

The war in Ukraine and a spike in global demand for gas has made the Beetaloo even more attractive, as if it wasn't already.

But there's some problems.

The Beetaloo spans an area of about 30,000 square kilometres.

It's good this place is so remote, contained in leased cattle station country, not so many people to physically upset should it be fast-tracked to development.

This remoteness provides challenges though - getting the exploratory drilling done in the wet seasons has been one of them.

How to get the gas to a refinery/port is another.

The Feds have been throwing money at the Northern Territory's Gunner Labor government for years trying to bring the Beetaloo into production against loud local opposition.

Trying to disguise the fact that gas is just another fossil fuel which must be burned to produce energy has been hard to argue in this age of renewables.

Prime Minister Scott Minister, and very many other experts, have coined the phrase "transition fuel" to draw a distinction between the much dirtier fuels like coal.

Without a transition fuel, it would be impossible to keep the lights on.

Using the gas is a climate change dilemma but so is digging it up.

Let's go back to that picture.

In 2018 the CSIRO was asked to map greenhouse gas emissions in the Beetaloo to get a baseline number.

That's what the scientists are doing in the picture.

CSIRO researchers travelled more than 15,000 kilometres over 29 days during the 2018 dry and fire seasons and the 2019 wet season using specially-equipped vehicles to measure various sources of methane emissions.

They didn't find much, other than a little whiff from termite mounds and passing cattle.

Only small amounts of the worst greenhouse gas methane were found at all.

Pretty much as expected.

The NT government's own scientific inquiry into this Beetaloo development found if these shale gas wells are fracked, or the gas is mined, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions will increase from between three to 4.5 per cent.

Not the NT's gas emissions, Australia's.

Hardly a number you want to contemplate when the political imperative is net zero.

Such a rise would set the scientists' methane snoopers on fire.

The scheme's opponents say it would be the equivalent of commissioning 50 more coal fired power stations.

The NT government promised to "deal with" the increased greenhouse gases which come from developing an onshore gas industry before it can go into full production.

It doesn't help that the NT Government has set a long-term "aspirational" target of net zero emissions by 2050.

The cash-strapped NT needs the money and jobs which would come from Beetaloo gas and looked to Canberra for a solution.

Biodiversity offsets perhaps, but the scale of them would be mind boggling.

A proposed carbon capture hub at Darwin?

The CSIRO has been asked again to join with the NT Government, industry and gas exploration companies to investigate that proposal.

Opponents insist carbon capture projects are unproven and a pipe-dream.

This week we heard another plan from Energy Minister Angus Taylor as he launched a study into how to deliver the Beetaloo's riches to the east coast gas market.

A ruddy long pipeline through Mount Isa seems the best bet.

While launching that study, Mr Taylor also had another go at the greenhouse gas problem.

There will be money to investigate options for "CO2-carrying pipelines" from the Beetaloo, perhaps to a Darwin carbon capture hub.

Pipelines going both ways.

"Our investment will help keep the lights on and homes heated in southern Australia, and support our industries and businesses to keep operating," Mr Taylor said.

Not to say Australia might make some coin by selling the stuff as well.

The Beetaloo has been undisturbed and unknown for such a long time, what a commotion it is causing today.

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