**Check against delivery
It is a great pleasure to be here today for the launch of the Turrum Phase 2 Project - an important $1.4 billion investment by ExxonMobil and BHPBilliton in the energy security of south-eastern Australia.
The Turrum field contains about one trillion cubic feet of gas and around 110 million barrels of oil and gas liquids.
Together with Kipper - announced earlier this year - Turrum is just the start of what I hope will be a new generation of oil and gas developments in Bass Strait.
Since 1964 Bass Strait has contributed $2.2 billion annually to Australia's gross domestic product in real terms[1] .
In addition, it has contributed more than $300 million in taxes and supported over 50,000 jobs in Victoria every year for 44 years.
Capital investment over that time has been $13 billion and the Kipper and Turrum investment decisions this year will lead to a further $2.8 billion worth of capital being deployed in Bass Strait.
And Bass Strait has much more potential yet to be realised.
In the last two years alone, work-over programs have added 30,000 barrels a day to oil production.
That's about a 30 per cent increase.
There are still more than 20 years of oil production and more than 30 years of gas production remaining in Bass Strait.
This is very important with Australia facing a trade deficit in petroleum products of more than $25 billion by about 2015.
Proven and probable gas reserves are 7 trillion cubic feet and more than 20 per cent of that gas has been proved up in the last three years.
To give you an idea of what that means in practical terms, Bass Strait has produced about 5 trillion cubic feet over the last 40 years.
The record of reserves replacement and extension of field life has been outstanding, and with record energy prices and technology advances, there is a lot of life left in Bass Strait.
It is a great tribute to both ExxonMobil and BHPBilliton.
It is worth noting that this is also a great venture between a home grown Australian company and a foreign investor - both of which are international corporate icons of the highest quality.
Through its Mobil heritage, ExxonMobil has been a part of the fabric of Australian corporate life and resource development since 1895, not that long after BHP started its epic journey at Broken Hill in 1883.
As I have said many times, Australia is a country built on foreign investment and we are delighted that foreign companies want to invest in Australia.
Our support of foreign investment is longstanding and non-discriminatory, particularly when it is in our national interest and facilitates the development of Australia's resources for the benefit of all Australians.
We need to continue to provide an environment that rewards the vision and courage of companies like ExxonMobil and BHPBilliton, and unlocks Australia's resource wealth.
The Australian Government is absolutely committed to doing just that.
We need to open up frontier areas - most of Australia's 50-odd sedimentary basins are largely unexplored.
While Turrum is an important domestic gas project, particularly as demand for gas on the east coast grows in a carbon-constrained world, we need to do more to develop our vast gas resources.
This is particularly so for those fields remote from infrastructure and markets in Australia's North West.
To this end, the Henry Taxation Review will include an assessment of the barriers to investment in large-scale downstream gas processing projects in Australia, the particular hurdles faced by remote gas developers, and consideration of the future policy framework for new sunrise industry investment in Australia's gas sector, including new LNG, Gas-to-Liquids, and domestic gas projects.
Also on the reform and investment front, the Government recently introduced an amendment to the Offshore Petroleum Act to provide a framework for carbon capture and storage.
This is an issue particularly important here in Victoria where carbon capture and storage is vital for the future of the coal and electricity industry in the Latrobe Valley and where promising storage areas occur in and around the Bass Strait petroleum province.
In the future, petroleum, coal and electricity industries will be working together here in Victoria.
I am absolutely committed to the economic future of all three industries here in Victoria and therefore we have to get the balance right between protecting the existing rights of petroleum title-holders and providing a workable framework for carbon storage in the future.
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper was released last week and I encourage the industry to make a considered and proper assessment about the implications of the policy proposal.
The Government knows it is vital to get the Scheme right for Australian industry, exports, investment and jobs and therefore industry's contribution is very important.
There is a lot happening on the reform front for the petroleum sector - the Productivity Commission review of upstream petroleum industry regulation, my Department's review of retention lease policy, development of an exploration incentives package, the National Energy Security Assessment, the Energy White Paper.
All of these initiatives are about achieving a stronger Australian resources sector for the future in partnership with the industry.
In closing, I congratulate ExxonMobil and BHPBilliton for reaching this important milestone - a final investment decision for Turrum - and for the outstanding role they have played in the development of the Australian minerals and petroleum industries for well over a century.
I look forward to the important contribution that the Turrum Phase 2 project will make to meeting our energy security challenges, and wish the development every success.
Thank you.
[1] NPV5(2004) - note that historical tax and capital investment numbers are also in real terms.