**Check against delivery
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
As a long-term advocate of CTL technology, it gives me great pleasure to be here today in Chinchilla to officially launch Linc Energy's Coal-to-Liquids demonstration plant.
This is a significant achievement with great potential for a country like Australia which has enormous coal resources but is increasingly dependent on imported oil.
The establishment of a vibrant synthetic fuels industry in Australia would reduce our growing trade deficit in petroleum liquids that last year had grown to almost $15 billion.
Reducing dependence on imported oil is a dream of many countries around the world: large oil discoveries are becoming rarer while the economic impact of fluctuating oil prices becomes greater.
As I have said before, Australia today is oil poor but gas and coal rich. We have to do more with our vast resources of gas and coal.
When it comes to coal, we have over 500 years of known resources.
That is why it is so important for us to get low emission coal technology right, and to look at converting some of our gas and coal to transport fuels like clean diesel.
The establishment of a synthetic fuels industry will provide significant opportunities to Australia:
- It will provide an avenue for the commercialisation of stranded resources, through technology such as that being demonstrated by Linc Energy with Underground Coal Gasification;
- It will promote regional development through new jobs and growth; and
- It will improve our balance of trade in petroleum liquids through import replacement and export potential.
Linc Energy is playing an important role in this process.
The successful integration of Underground Coal Gasification and CTL technologies presents exciting opportunities develop resources that were previously considered uneconomic.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Australian Government applauds innovation such as the work Linc Energy has undertaken in developing this facility.
We are committed to the development of technologies that will deliver economically viable, environmentally sustainable, alternative transport fuels in Australia.
We are looking to encourage those alternative transport fuels that draw on our abundance of natural gas, coal, and coal seam methane.
In the same way, we believe biomass-to-liquids has great potential and that is why we are supporting research and development of second generation biofuels.
There are a number of Government initiatives underway to encourage the development of a thriving industry.
The Government made an election commitment to use the $500 million National Low Emissions Coal Fund to support projects that utilise our extensive coal resources with minimal carbon emissions.
The work undertaken through the Fund's national carbon mapping and infrastructure plan is in the process of identifying areas suitable for carbon storage and how best to develop the required infrastructure.
The Government has initiated an Energy White Paper - to be completed by my Department - which will provide the basis for an industry framework to facilitate the future development of both CTL and GTL industries.
My Department has released a number of discussion papers for industry consultation.
As part of this process my Department will be holding consultation workshops in Brisbane next Monday and Tuesday.
I would encourage all of you with an interest in this industry to play an active part in this process. Your ideas and creativity will provide the basis for our future policy directions.
As I said earlier the opening of this demonstration facility represents an important step forward both for Linc and for Australia.
It represents another step towards the establishment of a true commercial scale synthetic fuels industry in Australia.
I wish Linc Energy every success in meeting its future objectives and take great pleasure in declaring this demonstration facility officially open.