It says APPEA wilfully misrepresented the findings.

APPEA incorrectly pointed to Australia as having the lowest wholesale gas prices in the region, that is Bangladesh at $US3/MMBtu, but Domgas Alliance executive director Matt Brown said APPEA had further selectively quoted the report to suggest Australian domestic users are not being asked to pay international prices.

He called the suggestion that the Australian wholesale domestic gas market is priced at $US4 per gigajoule as highly dubious.

“There’s a fairly simple test here for APPEA,” Brown said.

“APPEA should immediately identify which of its members are prepared to supply into the domestic market at $4 per gigajoule because Australian domestic gas users are ready and waiting for the call.

“We suspect there will be none.”

Brown said the report, which looked at the 2015 gas market, did not take into account upward once pressure on the east coast since the advent of LNG exports from Queensland late last year.

“It is therefore reflecting prices being paid under existing contracts. As more and more of these contracts expire, domestic industry will face rapidly escalating prices.

“The IGU report itself states that significant changes in price formation mechanisms in the Asia Pacific are being ‘offset by new contracts in Australia which are linked to the LNG netback price’.”

He said that while the rest of the world is reaping the benefits of greater gas on gas competition, Australia is headed in the opposite direction.

“We would welcome a move by APPEA to identify which of its members are prepared to offer or write long term contracts for domestic customers which are not linked to LNG netback prices.

“Again, we suspect there will be none.”

The DomGas Alliance represents major gas buyers, primarily in the Western Australian gas market, which is isolated from the east coast pipeline network, and where higher gas prices linked to global LNG prices have been a feature of the market since the 1990s.