Australia is the future of gas, and always will be

YOU CAN BUILD a lot in 75 years. The Great Pyramid took about 25 years to be finished. The Byzantine cathedral of Hagia Sofia, roughly five. The Apollo Space Programme put a man on the moon in less than a decade.

- DAVID FICKLING Bloomberg

Exporting gas from the tropical waters northwest of Australia is proving to be a lot harder. From the excitement and dismay last week that greeted the government's approval of an extended licence for the North West Shelf gas processing plant at Karratha, you might get the impression that it was on the brink of going ahead. The sign-off will allow the plant to continue operating as long as 2070, instead of closing when its current licence expires in 2030.

At the same time, this decision is unlikely to be quite the disaster for the global climate that one might fear. That's because the plant needs gas to process, and with existing reserves declining, Karratha's long-term future is contingent on Browse, a collection of three offshore gas fields roughly halfway between the coast of Australia and East Timor. Plans to develop Browse have fallen over for decades because getting petroleum out of such deep and remote waters is extremely difficult.