Energy white paper to tackle costs, skills, prices

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has pledged to set out a comprehensive policy to secure domestic energy needs and maintain international competitiveness in an energy white paper to be released next year, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Macfarlane said the policy document, to be completed in September, would drive reforms in the energy sector and set out stable energy policy, giving investors confidence about the regulatory environment.

He said action would be taken to ease cost pressures on households and business from energy supplies.

Former Labor resources minister Martin Ferguson released an energy white paper last year, but Macfarlane said the process was “bungled” and beset by an “endless cycle of delays”

Friedland to ‘participate’ in Turquoise issue: reports

Mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland says he will “fully participate” in the Rio Tinto-majority owned Turquoise Hill Resources right issues, according to reports, says the AFR.

Turquoise Hill, which owns the majority of the Mongolian-based Oyu Tolgoi copper mines, launched its prospectus released last week for its $US2.4 billion ($A2.62 billion) rights issue to repay debt provided by Rio Tinto and partly fund the development of the mine.

Speaking at a London mining conference, Freidland told Reuters: “I have arranged my affairs to participate fully [in the Turquoise Hill rights issue]”

Vic government warned its coal seam ban might cost jobs

The Napthine government's rejection of its gas taskforce's call to drop bans on coal seam gas exploration may lead to manufacturing and regional job losses, according to taskforce chairman Peter Reith, according to The Australian.

Reith delivered a scathing assessment of Victorian Premier Denis Napthine's decision last month to delay any lifting of a ban on coal seam gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, until 2015, despite a looming east coast gas price spike as $70 billion of LNG plants start up in Gladstone from next year.

“If we do see job losses next year and the following year, I think we'll all have it in our mind that people at the political level didn't wish to do anything now,” Reith told a business lunch in Melbourne yesterday.