Australia is home to quite a few LARGE offshore gas fields, IIRC you also have a few LARGE LNG export terminals that liquify natural to ship overseas. Australia itself is not out of gas as you say BD, and the basins you have offshore are bona fide petroleum systems (meaning even though not drilled yet everything is present to contain oil and gas, the correct formations, rock maturity, etc). The potential for more discoveries is very good. This what happens when gov't gets TOO INVoLVED in energy, the market gets skewed. If an oil company can sell their gas in Aussie land they would not go to the expense of cooling it down to -300 degrees and then having a fleet of LNG tankers to haul the stuff. That's a very expensive process, they'd rather lay a pipeline to shore and have in a lot of places, but once again the gov't is putting obstacles in place which makes it easier to ship overseas...