IN GREEK mythology, a gorgon was a creature so hideous that anyone who looked at one turned to stone. In contemporary Australia, Gorgon is an enormous liquefied natural gas (LNG) project which was supposed to pay huge economic dividends. It is the centrepiece of a decade-long, A$200bn ($148bn) construction boom in gas-export facilities. In 2019 Australia is likely to surpass Qatar to become the world’s biggest exporter of LNG. The benefits to the government, however, have not been as quite as entrancing as expected.
At one point Chevron, the company running Gorgon, promised the government so much revenue that it would be able to lower personal income taxes. As recently as March the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, hailed “the golden age of gas” and forecast that Gorgon alone would add a total of A$440bn to the economy. Yet the Treasury says that revenue from the petroleum resources rent tax (PRRT), through which energy firms pay the federal government for the right to extract oil and gas, is forecast to fall from A$1.2bn in the fiscal year that ended in mid-2015 to A$800m in 2020—even as the volume of exports soars.
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