Monday, February 27

Tale of two Australias: Gas rush splits town

GLADSTONE, Australia (MarketWatch) — Banking on coal-seam gas to fuel its next wave of resource riches, Australia is fostering the budding industry involving a lot of dirt, trucks and pipes. And money.
In the grubby but sun-kissed port town of Gladstone in central Queensland, some construction workers are pulling in wages up to three times their counterparts in other parts of the country.
Driving the boom is the transformation of Gladstone harbor into a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export hub to feed Asia’s swelling appetite for energy.
“The benefit of this boom that is different to the last one, during 2004 and 2007, is that other than in [resource-rich] Western Australia, the rest of the country is doing nothing,” said Leo Zussino, chief executive of the Gladstone Ports Corporation (GPC).
“There aren’t many places in Australia where masses of jobs are being created,” Zussino said.


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