AFR: Transforming Northern Territory's Pipe Dream to $1b pipeline

The Northern Territory has earned four final tenders for the construction of a pipedream that is now even closer to reality, the $1.1 billion umbilical that will link central Australia's stranded gas fields to energy molecule-hungry customers up and down the nation's east coast.

Tenders closed last week and Mick McCormack's national leader in the pipeline business, APA Group, is among the quartet that has delivered its final offer.

The others three bids are from competing integrated energy operators Jemena and Duet along with a fourth player called the Pipeline Consortia Partners Australia, which is led by China National Petroleum Corporation.

It is understood APA and one other have built proposals around the shortest routes east, which would see a pipeline travel through Tennant Creek and to the battered Queensland mining capital of Mount Isa, where it would link into Queensland's massive network.

But there are two proposals that would take the more expensive route, driving the pipe south to Moomba, where Northern Territory gas could be more readily directed to the state market of most need, NSW.

One of the interesting things about this process is that the NT is carrying the full weight of the decision and yet its importance to the nation is obvious to all except, apparently, the Commonwealth. The NT is running a process that will complete the national gas grid but without the guidance of any sort of national energy policy or a serious level of engagement by the federal government. MORE