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Angus Taylor makes no sense

Really, I could stop at the headline, but Angus Taylor’s latest foray to reassure us that he’s got us covered baffles me.

I’m not talking about hatred of wind farms or dodgy water deals, Grassgate or Clovergate. I’m not talking about securing our domestic oil supply by storing it in the US either. I’m talking urea (and I’m not taking the piss).

Earlier this week, Angus issued a press release addressing the potentially catastrophic shortage of urea. Apparently, it is a key ingredient in the diesel exhaust fluid (AdBlue) and in fertiliser, and China has stopped exporting it in order to keep domestic prices down.

Angus is vowing to ‘keep our trucks running’.

We are quickly and actively working to ensure supply chains of both refined urea and AdBlue are secure so that industry can have certainty on their operations.

Global supply pressures, stemming from increased domestic use in China, have led to international issues in securing refined urea, which is key to producing AdBlue. This is exacerbated by the global shortage of natural gas, the essential ingredient used to make urea.

Righto. Angus is on the job. Except …

Australia’s largest producer of urea, Incitec Pivot, told the stock exchange last month it plans to close its main urea plant in Brisbane’s Gibson Island by the end of next year. The facility had been unable to secure “an economically viable long-term gas supply.”

Paradoxically, Australia’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources said in its Resources and Energy Quarterly released June 28 that the global LNG market is likely to be marked by a surplus of supply over the next couple of years, which will place downward pressure on prices.

“Given the large-scale expansion of global LNG capacity in recent years, import demand is expected to remain short of export capacity throughout the outlook period,” the report said.

Then I read in the New York Times …

Tanker ships carrying liquefied natural gas from exporters like the United States, Qatar and Australia have been steaming toward China and Brazil, drawn by higher prices.

The pressure in the natural gas markets is pushing oil prices higher as well, analysts say. Traders are anticipating that, with gas having reached a level in some cases that is comparable to oil selling for about $170 a barrel, there is a large incentive in some industries to burn oil (lately about $75 to $80 a barrel) instead of gas for electric power, stoking demand.

So China won’t sell us urea but we will sell them LNG (at temporarily exorbitant prices that have pushed up the price of oil) when our own domestic producer of urea can’t get a gas deal that would allow them to keep production going even though the government is predicting an oversupply.

 

 

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15 comments

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  1. Harry Lime

    Gees, I dunno,I have the strong impression that
    Grassgate Gussy is full of shit.Insulting doesn’t even come closeTheir days of deceit are numbered.If I was the government in waiting ,I’d be quietly organising the surrender of passports by certain suspects of the criminal cartel posing as our Federal government.The way we are screwed with domestic gas prices is but one example of the insidious relantionship between fossil fuel wallahs and our puppet government.Evening ,Nifty.
    But I think little Johnny Rotten and Peaheart Costellot were behind that.Too bad about the spectre of frying the planet and our children’s future.

  2. New England Cocky

    Kaye Lee, but surely Gassie Taylor is setting up market expectations so that $80 MILLION empty glass of MDB water plan may be re-run with other commodities essential for Australian voters to house, feed and keep their families in the manner they expected before the 2013 RAbbott COALition misgovernment was elected.

    First, you create a shortage of raw materials that will encourage producers to move overseas taking their jobs with them. This is good political strategy because it reduces the number of unionists able to vote for LABOR at any Australian elections. Liarbrals know in their black hearts that ”Unions are bad” because they represent the best interests of workers rather than tug the forelock to the bosses.

    Then having created an export marketing opportunity for a now foreign production entity the Liarbral misgovernment may create a press release extolling their own virtue in providing Australian government subsidies to those once Australian corporations now exporting into Australia.

    In the case of urea which has an agricultural use as fertiliser and explosives, this suits the Nazional$ who can claim (another) farming subsidy because of the necessarily higher cost of fertilisers and diesel fuel additives.

    Now what Prim Monster for Making Announcements would not see the value in announcing more government largess to the already over-subsidised increasingly corporatised agricultural sector? I mean, how good is that??

    This self-inflicted political wound is festering very badly.

  3. Michael Taylor

    It might just be me, but I reckon Angus Taylor is up there with the most devious and dishonest members of the LNP. He’s in Division 1.

  4. Phil Pryor

    Fartgas Taylor should rent out his skull while it’s vacant, for cash, as it is already negatively geared. What a plop of conservative shit, pandering to narrow interests while failing in duty to Australia’s needs. He is incapable of adequate action and foresight. It is all being rigged and set up for a salad of duties, concessions, writedowns, writeoffs, bounties, tax advantages, organised contracts, but for narrow interests only connected to donors, patrons, supporters, fellow greedites, titfortatting parasitism. Corruption…

  5. Kaye Lee

    For sure Michael.

    Another of his latest stunts…..

    Taylor visited Empire Energy operations in the Beetaloo Basin in October last year, a day after he and representatives from Empire Energy attended a Liberal Party fundraiser in Darwin.

    The chair of a fundraising body affiliated with Taylor, the Hume Forum, also attended the site visit, along with other Liberal party politicians, fossil fuel industry representatives and a reporter from Sky News.

    Taylor is not the responsible minister for the grants program. Federal resources minister Keith Pitt signed off on $21 million worth of grants to Empire Energy in July.

    Labor to target Taylor’s role in grants given to gas company with Liberal Party links

  6. Kaye Lee

    And….

    The federal government auditor has slammed the allocation of a multi million dollar grant to a study into a new coal fired power station, finding that it did not satisfy the grant criteria, and has also raised questions about the use of private emails by energy and emissions reductions minister Angus Taylor and department officials.

    The ANAO audit found $3.3 million of this funding had been awarded to the proponents of the Collinsville coal-fired power station, Shine Energy, despite a departmental assessment concluding there was a significant risk that Shine Energy would be unable to deliver a feasibility study the grant was supposed to fund.

    The audit also found that department officials had not appropriately disclosed potential conflicts of interests and identified multiple instances of federal energy minister Angus Taylor receiving confidential documents relating to his ministerial duties via his personal email accounts.

    Audit office questions Taylor emails as it slams Collinsville coal plant grant

  7. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, I recall that Taylor’s wife might – might – have gained something too on something I can’t remember what.

    (Dear Angus, this is not an accusation, but more of a question.)

    I’d search for something on Google but, now that the rain has stopped, I have to try out Carol’s new lawnmower. 😁

  8. Kaye Lee

    The Taylors are well-represented in various areas.

    Bronnie Taylor is the first female deputy leader of the NSW National Party in more than a century. Her husband is Duncan Taylor, Angus’s brother.

    “The New South Wales government funded a $16m education project closely associated with the spouse of a state minister despite a cost-benefit analysis showing the project would be unlikely to deliver a positive benefit to the state.

    The 2016 analysis of the proposed Country Universities Centres has surfaced after a call for papers by the NSW Legislative Council. The project was proposed by Duncan Taylor, husband of the upper house Nationals MP Bronwyn Taylor, who at the time was parliamentary secretary to John Barilaro, the state Nationals leader and deputy premier.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/23/nsw-funded-16m-project-run-by-mp-bronwyn-taylors-husband

    Then there’s brother Richard…who. with one company, got busted for poisoning endangered grassland, then got a grant for another company to investigate changing the rules.

    First was Jamland and Grassgate
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/30/angus-taylor-jam-land-company-part-owned-illegally-poisoned-endangered-grasslands-investigation-finds

    Then MFS

    Monaro Farming Systems, an agricultural group that includes federal MP Angus Taylor’s brother, received a $107,000 grant from the sustainable land management fund that they hadn’t applied for and were surprised to receive, but then used to pay for “technical work on defining what constitutes native grasslands and for a pilot of the method.”

    “Marshall also revealed that the deputy premier, John Barilaro, had written to him asking for another grant of $70,000 for MFS in February or March 2020. It is unclear what the grant was for.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/03/grants-to-farming-group-associated-with-angus-taylors-brother-to-be-reviewed

    No wonder Barilaro resigned after appearing at ICAC. There are so many questions that could come up…. not that I am implying any wrongdoing in any way….I’m sure this is all within the rules of Coalition manus manum lavat.

    Regarding, Angus’s wife, rumours she was considering running for mayor of Sydney were denied after the Clovergate affair didn’t go so well.

  9. Kaye Lee

    Sorry to post so much stuff…..it’s just with Angus Taylor….one thing keeps leading to another. Federal ICAC now and a complete overhaul and transparency about grants is a must.

  10. Michael Taylor

    Nothing to be sorry about, Kaye. I learn a hell of a lot stuff from your comments, and I reckon that everyone here would agree.

  11. New England Cocky

    @Michael Taylor: I have often wondered how a concerned citizen like our very talented & hard working Kaye Lee can discover all these ”interesting facts” about politicians especially the misdeeds of COALiiton politicians, yet the muddling stench mediocrity are unable to unearth any such information. I guess if you do not look then you do not discover … so obviously the COALition under Scummo is as pure as new blown snow, if a little flaky.

    Thank goodness for AIMN and their star journalist Kaye Lee.

  12. Kaye Lee

    To be fair, I am often quoting stories from the msm. I guess they concentrate on breaking news and today’s media releases or scandals where we have the luxury of time (and freedom from influence) to put it all together. Rossleigh recently said something about being cursed with a long memory. I know how he feels. Ably supported by Google to remind me of course. I just shake my head in bewilderment that these guys keep getting away with it.

    PS Thanks for the encouragement. At times it all seems so futile.

  13. GL

    Not coming soon to an ICAC near you, it’s Super-Grifter Angus. Unable to avoid a rort. Yes, it’s Super-Grifter! See Super-Grifter shift his cash offshore faster than a beer down The Beetroots gullet.

  14. Jack sprat

    I remember years ago when I was doing shut down work on the urea plant at Incitec Pivot in Brisbane ,one of their bosses telling me that AdBlue was their most profitable product. That was when gas was cheap and before the Govt subsidized the the large scale extraction refining and exporting of gas in Qld without considering to safeguard domestic supply . Also same scenario when I did shut down work on gas fire power stations , they are becoming unprofitable as as gas prices climb due to large scale exporting to overseas countries . In fact one of the newer ones back then Swan Bank was permanently moth balled by the liberal premier at the time can do Newman and only reopened when a labor govt was elected . Now Swan bank runs at a loss every year and the total cost of the asset has been written off

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