The Australian federal government has awarded a contract to study the feasibility of a west to east gas pipeline stretching across the length of Australia and to report back to the government in March next year.

The study is the first Commonwealth commissioned investigation into the potential for a pipeline from Western Australia to fill the void in a gas famished east coast market. Some expert estimates have already costed the expensive pipeline at up to US$4 billion and delivered unfavorable verdicts on its viability.

Nevertheless, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, has rekindled the idea of a pipeline traversing Australia that would only be 200 odd miles less than the distance from Los Angeles to New York.

“Improving the transparency, competitiveness and long-term security of Australia’s gas market is a priority for the Government, as gas is a crucial component of the current and future energy mix to ensure we keep the lights on,” Frydenberg said.

Perth-based consulting firm ACIL Allen will be contracted to conduct the market and analysis part of the study, while GHD will take responsibility for the pipeline engineering and route assessment aspect of the project.

The project has received the backing of Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and Federal Finance Minister and Western Australia senator, Mathias Cormann.

On a visit to Perth last month, Joyce said the Northern Infrastructure Facility could be used to finance delivery of gas from the west to the east coast.

The idea of a “nation building” coast- to-coast gas pipeline was first flighted by former Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett in April, one month after his party lost the state election. Barnett remains a Member of Parliament for Cottesloe.

Barnett said it was “ludicrous” that a 2500 mile pipeline—unlocking gas from the abundant, “world class resource” of the North West Shelf in the northwest corner of WA for the energy hungry east coast states of Victoria and New South Wales – was not on the table.

“We should be looking at transporting that gas across country, as happens in Europe, North America and Russia. There is nothing secret and difficult about building a gas pipeline,” Barnett said.

“From outside Australia, it just looks stupid. We have this massive resource the rest of the world is buying and we are not using it ourselves.”

The initiative appeared to be stillborn, however, after Steve Davies, Australian Pipelines and Gas Association national policy manager, said that challenging terrain and economies of scale were heavily loaded against the pipeline.

“In Europe, they move huge volumes of gas. Some of the 46-in. pipelines out of Russia carry 1,000 petajoules a year, which is a completely different magnitude to what we are dealing with as we would need to supply a projected shortfall of 50-60 petajoules, or 200 terajoules a day” Davies said.

Davies conservatively estimated that the pipeline would cost almost $4 billion and said he “couldn’t see it being built within four years.”

He drew a comparison between Australia and the U.S., saying the latter contained a web of pipelines that gas producers were able to tie into to supply a population of 320 million people spread across the country. By contrast, 70% of Australia’s 23 million people were located in and around five coastal cities; Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

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