Government intervention and increased regulatory scrutiny have altered the investment environment for the energy sector in Australia. Asia’s efforts to decarbonize will drive long-term investment in Australia’s renewable, hydrogen and carbon capture potential.
But as the energy sector shifts emphasis back towards security of supply and affordability, Australia remains a competitive supplier of gas and LNG in Asia Pacific. Providing an environment that supports investment in new sources of supply will be critical in maintaining Australia’s upstream attractiveness.
Looking closer at Australia’s oil and gas sector, how are companies positioned to manage the rising complexity and uncertainty faced when making long-term capital decisions? Are Australia’s homegrown players leaders or laggards when pitched against their international peers? And how competitive are Australia’s oil and gas champions in the context of the country’s wider natural resources sector?
Benchmarking corporate positioning through the lens of near-term resilience and long-term sustainability, we identify the challenges, opportunities and strategic implications for Australia’s corporate oil and gas landscape.

The global LNG market has returned to a semblance of calm after a tumultuous 2022. European and Chinese industrial demand is yet to recover, while a nuclear power renaissance is underway in Japan and South Korea. This paper will detail our expectations for LNG demand growth, discuss demand drivers and market development opportunities for Australian LNG between the late 2020s to early 2030s. We see LNG demand in the region increasing from 252 Mtpa in 2022 to 450 Mtpa by 2032. The largest source of growth continues to be China where we see demand growing from 64 Mtpa to 136 Mtpa, driven by uptake of LNG in the industrial and buildings sectors. We will also see South Asian demand growing from 31 Mtpa to 86 Mtpa, and Southeast Asian demand from 19 Mtpa to 90 Mtpa. Even in legacy markets of Japan and Korea where we see demand declining marginally in this timeframe, we will see the emergence of new buyers and the impact of market liberalization measures. The expiry of legacy contracts and the rising influence of US LNG is set to complicate market dynamics further. We discuss the challenges of the energy transition in a region that must balance emissions considerations with energy demand. We conclude that Australian projects with their proximate location and legacy relationships will remain an attractive proposition for Asian buyers. Ullage at existing LNG plants will support backfill economics, with decarbonization measures taken under the Safeguard Mechanism demonstrating genuine emissions reduction action.

Japan’s trifold energy focus (security, price and Net Zero by 2050) sits against a backdrop of a dire population demographic, and implications for the economy and the stability of the Yen. As the world’s 5th GHG emitter, Japan is likely to fall short of its reduction targets.
To bridge this gap, Japan is being inextricably driven offshore. Geopolitical unrest has raised Australia's position to 2nd (up from 6th) behind the US as a preferred investment targets.
This Paper explores why Japanese Government, Corporates, Universities, Start-ups and VCs are aggressively on the energy partnership trail with Australia; alignment of Japanese and Australian corporate and government policies; target investments (coal & LNG; CCS, green and blue hydrogen, ammonia and MCH, critical minerals, on and offshore wind, solar, battery storage, carbon credits, low emissions metals and e-fuels); and factors for success (transferable track record, complementarity of resources and capital, international supply chain, trust and "ticking all the boxes") between these Special Strategic Partners.

The global private sector is exploring and developing decarbonization pathways for each of the energy sectors – transportation and its many sub-sectors, power, and industry. Each of these sectors and sub-sectors interacts with the others, and these interactions should be understood and considered at a governance level.
It can be assumed that the oil barrel will sit at the heart of this multi-sector interplay for the next 15 to 20 years, and how we decarbonize each sector during that time will shape and constrain our global energy situation for the bulk of this century.
As an example, rapid decarbonization of the maritime sector will impact the refining sector, which in turn will have implications on the availability and cost of fuels for the remaining sectors.
This topic examines how the decarbonization of one sector affects other sectors, and how our continued medium-term reliance on oil, in particular, introduces complex constraints. Renewable energy, fossil fuels, low-carbon hydrogen and synthetic fuels will need to be balanced in such a way that decarbonization pathway decisions made independently by isolated sectors do not hinder or even set back the decarbonization efforts and options of other sectors.
This topic will also look at the supply chain realities of decarbonizing certain transportation sectors.

As a global energy transition community we talk a lot about producing hydrogen in Australia, South America, the Middle East and now the USA, and transporting that to markets such as Japan, Korea, Singapore and Europe. How will we do this, what are the technologies available, and what are the advantages and challenges of each? This is a practical assessment of the situation highlighting where we need to focus our efforts as a global community to enable hydrogen supply chains of the future to succeed.

In 2019, ASX-listed Exploration & Production (E&P) companies raised over A$2.7 billion in capital, marking a peak in their recent fundraising efforts. However, this has declined annually since, with only about A$1.2 billion raised in 2022, despite lower RBA interest rates compared to 2019. The investment ratio, measuring investments relative to cash from operations, plummeted from 60% in 2017 to 19% in 2022. Globally, public E&P players averaged 59% in 2017 and 31% in 2022. Going forward, we expect Australia's investment ratio to average 25% between 2023-2025, compared to the global average of 47%. This paper explores Australian E&P capital expenditure trends against global patterns, attributing the decline to factors such as environmental and legal risks, limited access to capital, regulatory hurdles, and approval delays. For instance, offshore environment plan approvals now take over a year on average, compared to four months in 2017. Despite high oil and gas prices, spare infrastructure capacity, and domestic gas market shortfalls, investment activity in Australia wanes. In contrast, oil and gas spending increased in 2023 compared to 2022 on every continent except Australia and Russia. Additionally, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activity, often indicating industry interest, dropped by nearly half in 2022 compared to 2018. This paper examines why Australia lags in capital spend, citing environmental, regulatory, and approval challenges. While global trends show increased spending, Australia's oil & gas sector faces headwinds in attracting investments and M&A activity.