How the big three robbed us of our own gas

In Melbourne, gas cooktops are only the start.

The LNG plant at Gladstone in Queensland. 

Melburnians use gas for stoves, hot water, central heating and room heating. Ninety per cent of Melbourne homes have gas, compared to only 50 per cent in Sydney. Victoria accounts for two-thirds of all the household gas used in Australia. And Victorian industry uses little else.

Because it's been astoundingly cheap.

Esso and BHP discovered it by accident, as a byproduct of searching for oil in Bass Strait in the 1960s. Rather than burn it at sea (as they might have been inclined to do) they were prevailed upon to pipe it to the mainland where they as good as gave it away. 

A feud between NSW and Victoria at the time meant that it wasn't piped north of Wodonga.

Read Peter Martin’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “How the big three robbed us of our own gas.”