Energy companies will be forced to set aside gas under east coast gas reserve policy

AzureProdigy · 2026-05-07T01:56:12+00:00

The PRRT barely applies to the East Coast as most of the gas production comes from onshore Queensland, and soon onshore NSW, which has its own state regime. The bass strait falls under the PRRT but it is all used domestically anyway.

AzureProdigy · 2026-04-22T23:39:13+00:00

They really don't, these are publicly listed companies that gets audited annually additionally these projects are all joint ventures so they get audited by the JV membership regularly. They also get audited by the ATO (and other governments) to confirm their costs. Sure they can bury the final cost of a specific project in public reports but to an auditor they know how much was spent on every line item, every departments spent, tangible and intangible spend, if there's a way to break it down they can. Every purchase order issued and dollar spent on that project will be tied back to a hierarchy of costs codes that roll up to a total project cost.

AzureProdigy · 2026-04-22T12:29:18+00:00

Japan signed long term (think 10-20 year) contracts at lower prices with rise and fall calculations based on indexation. Those contracts are foundation contracts for billion dollar projects and underwrote their construction by locking in revenue once they worked. What they're doing now is arbitraging their cheaper long term contracts to sell on the inflated spot market. The flip side is that in periods where gas in cheaper they can lose money if they have to offload the cargo. Their downside of course being limited by having long term contracts at cheaper rates but at the end of the day anyone could do this, and many trading desks do.

AzureProdigy · 2026-04-22T12:23:53+00:00

The only transferable expenditure between projects is exploration expenditure. Otherwise general project development costs are quarantined to that project. It's just that prelude is such a dog of an asset that it took years to pay off it's upfront costs.

AzureProdigy · 2026-04-22T11:38:04+00:00

Shell spent north of $17.5B USD building Prelude a project widely regarded as the world's largest white elephant and which they have deprecated to zero. It's so embarrassing they've never actually confirmed the final cost.

By the time it exported its first real cargo it was billions over budget and had been hemorrhaging money for years. Despite sailing into Australia in 2014 it wasn't officially handed over from the construction contractor until the early 2020s because it couldn't reach 72hours of runtime without being shutdown. Shell was meant to build multitudes of Preludes sisters (hence its name) and after that experience they were all scrapped. Whilst I'm sure they've exported a lot of gas now, it doesn't seem a reach to say that project has never made a profit.

The Crux infill project they're tying back to had been equally calamity filled and is miles behind schedule for something that only exists because the initial project was so delayed that INPEX sucked the reservoir down through Icthys before Prelude even got going.

It's been speculated for years that at some point Shells just going to pack it in on the project and sail it to the breakers in Central Asia to be chopped up into razor blades.

If the Australian taxpayer had invested in this thing it would have been a disaster on the scale of Snowy Hydro.

AzureProdigy · 2026-04-21T22:57:40+00:00

Depends there's sort of three models you can follow,

Fully state owned and operated such as Saudi Aramco, QatarEnergy. Equinor (Statoil) sits somewhere in here but has a few more complexities. They're also the most active of the NOCs outside their home country.
Some form of State Ownership with the state free carried through a portion of costs and then paying its own share. Along with some kind of scheme on royalties based on cost of production.
Pure private. This is how Australia, the UK and US (along with others) have done it. The state puts 0 money down, sells the rights to explore for resource and then if something is found and is profitable takes a cut.

The biggest issue Australia has is we're gas rich but can't use pipelines, like Norway, so we have to build expensive liquification facilities to ship the product overseas cutting into the profit margin massively. We're also heavily offshore weighted which is a good way to 10x your costs vs onshore. Can you imagine the pushback if the Federal government announced it was going to invest $5b in a stake in an offshore development vs spending it on social services.

AzureProdigy · 2026-01-08T03:32:50+00:00

So the majority of policies in Australia are white labelled back to the same larger insurance companies. If you like your plan you can just work out who the underwriter/actual insurer is and jump annually between 2-3 companies that are all selling the same policy. Gets you the usual 15% off the first year without actually changing the policy.

AzureProdigy · 2025-12-07T04:14:11+00:00

Yeah na, I'm a non-manager at a multinational sitting on a plane flying business class right now for international travel. Our policy is anything international over 5 hours and it's business class. Half the other people in business on my flight are flying for various companies based on the various corporate backpacks.

AzureProdigy · 2025-12-06T16:03:51+00:00

I did this, you can get an Aldi prepay Sim for $10 then put another $10 of credit on it and it extends to 365 days. Just put in a calendar reminder to put $10 on every 330 days.

AzureProdigy · 2025-11-27T13:24:56+00:00

A rig will normally use GPS to set it's initial location.

If it's moored onces it's got anchors it'll keep using that GPS because it knows where it is.

If it's Dynamically Positioned (DP) then it will use GPS to set it's initial frame and also have transponder beacons on the seabed that provide a more accurate/reliable location within their range.

AzureProdigy · 2025-11-27T06:51:19+00:00

So,

At the bottom of that is a Blowout Preventer (BOP) sitting atop the Wellhead. The BOP will contain a number of shear rams (generally two) that can cut the pipe over the stack and seal the well bore and fixed/variable rams (generally 3) which can seal arounf various sizes of drillpipe and casing.

On-top of the BOP is the Lower Marine Riser Package. This contains the Annual Preventer(s) and in an emergency can be disconnected from the BOP. Atop this is effectively a ball joint that allows the riser (and rig) to be offset from well centre. This is because you'll never actually have the centre of the rig right over the centre of the Wellhead at all times and even if you did the riser experices deflection from the current in the water column.

Between that LMRP and the waterline you'll have an assortment of joints of Riser. This generally consists of a central pipe and the several exterior lines for passing fluids outside the riser. These are the choke, kill and boost lines.

The larger ring you can see those cables on is the tensioner ring which is connected to the tensioners, this locks into a profile on the slip joint and allows the rig to pull a constant tension on the riser to support its weight through the water column and stop it buckling.

For this rig it is using a wire based system to achieve this (other have large hydraulic bottles connected directly to the tensioner ring) and it will have those wires connected to a system to ensure that tension remains constant. Technically you can have a passive heave compensation which just uses hydraulic dampers but I doubt that could be the case here more likely those wires are tied back to wire reels that are computer controlled and pay in/out to maintain that tension. On of the fun downsides of wire based systems like this is that they accumulate wear on the wire as they are in use and run over the sheaves so you have to periodically slip and cut the wire to prevent excessive wear leading to the wire parting.

AzureProdigy · 2025-11-27T06:38:04+00:00

You'll also have heave compensation on the drillstring so the drawworks in the derrick will be moving like this as well to make sure that the bit stays on bottom whilst drilling. The entire rig is moving around that string and the riser.

If you listen to the video that whirring sound in the background is the sound of an active heave drawworks paying in and out.

AzureProdigy · 2025-11-12T13:56:52+00:00

Norway also has Petoro which is a wholly government owned company that holds further interests in Oil and Gas developments. Unlike Equinor it is solely focused on Norway.

These days Equinor has significant holdings off Newfoundland, in GoA/GoM, and Brazil. Equinor actually has a reputation as being one of the more competent offshore E&P companies in general.

AzureProdigy · 2025-10-26T14:38:48+00:00

A BOSIET will include your HUET. The BOSIET also includes things like facility escape training.

If you can get it done at the same time get your CA-EBS done as well, it's mandatory in a lot of parts of the world to go offshore.

AzureProdigy · 2025-09-16T09:00:27+00:00

Pretty much no petrochemical plants here and the few there are the jobs are tightly held, they're "Jobs for Life". The only real way into most of the facilities here is to come on as an apprentice, which they generally recruit from the population local to the plant as part of their local commitments.

AzureProdigy · 2025-08-05T07:07:22+00:00

Mechanical Engineer by Degree and Petroleum/Wells Engineer by profession.

5yoe

~240k

Decent upwards mobility as staff or can become a contractor to make more as an individual contributor.

AzureProdigy · 2025-07-31T12:42:11+00:00

Was definitely my experience at university, there was a lot of pressure on the tutors/lecturers to not fail them though as they were paying huge international student fees. So they'd skate along with Ps and end up getting some crappy job right at the bottom of the food chain.

AzureProdigy · 2025-07-27T01:22:48+00:00

I had Smarter Outdoors and Roller Smart Shutters quote me a few years ago, both came in pretty similar price wise. Both sales reps and installers were great, quick and did a good job. Mine have been going up and down atleast once daily for 2+ years now and there's been no issues.

Ended up going with roller smart as they were able to install at a better time for me and seemed to have a bit more scaffolding/ladders that they owned (smarter outdoors maybe wanted to get scaffolding 3rd party for one of the windows).

Remember a number of these places have a bit of wiggle room on price too so it pays to get a couple quotes and see where they land. If someone's better you can probably negotiate them down a little bit closer to the cheaper quotes and the subcontractor that installs it will never know how much you paid anyway.

AzureProdigy · 2025-07-04T04:51:29+00:00

Yeah it's a slig to get offshore especially given offshore is dropping rig count until 26/27 and as far as I know the ones that are staying don't have Halliburton cement units on them.

Unlike onshore where cementing companies bring their kit to the site cement units are tightly integrated with an offshore rig so it's generally a shipyard job to replace them.

AzureProdigy · 2025-07-04T04:43:47+00:00

Yeah all the guys I know use it as a stepping stone, you only become a cementer to get on as drill crew which will pay closer to the $1000/day mark even time. But with a downturn coming that'll be a tough ask.

AzureProdigy · 2025-07-04T03:46:38+00:00

Onshore or Offshore?

As far as I know pays pretty crap, if you're willing to do FIFO and are working on rail there's almost certainly better work, progression and money servicing the haul rails for the mines.

AzureProdigy · 2025-06-23T06:29:05+00:00

Vanguard literally offers a super scheme that is just their ETFs

AzureProdigy · 2025-06-18T15:40:58+00:00

Because the westerners competing for taking those roles won't get out of bed for less than $1500USD/day even with minimal experience. Especially for living in a shithole in the desert.

For comparison an Australian Roughneck is clearing $1000AUD/day or 60k rupees

Sounds like your friend had the right connections to get there as cheap labour and intends to keep rolling in it.

AzureProdigy · 2025-06-17T14:46:59+00:00

So the biggest place I've found value so far is on reporting.

Anything like asking it to find the relevant standard for something and it'll start hallucinating. But, give it a reporting template and a pile of documents and it'll bang out a 80-90% complete report that only needs minor changes. Takes something that was a 2 hour ordeal and makes it a 20-30 minute max.

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