The good news is that the US has reduced emissions by generating more baseload power with gas and less with coal. The bad news is that it may not last. In contrast to the optimism here some think it will fizzle out in 20 years not 100. See for example
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-02-05/falling-feeling-shale-gas-estimates-continue-downward
The US is building an LNG export terminal in Louisiana to get rid of the stuff the same time it uses a quarter of the world's oil. Perhaps millions of trucks could be converted to compressed natural gas instead of diesel made from imported oil. Fertiliser manufacturer Dow Chemical has argued that gas should be saved for later but that argument has fallen on deaf ears.

Australia seems to be assuming that because fracking and horizontal drilling produces abundant shale gas in the US it will do the same here, in the Cooper Basin for example. Maybe not. This is a classic case of counting chickens before they are hatched.

Almost any diesel or petrol powered vehicle can also be powered by compressed natural gas, [methane.] One cubic metre of methane produces the same calorific value, [power,] as a litre of petrol.
Local suppliers are on the public record, as saying, even with a fuel excise incorporated, they could supply NG for around 40 cents per cubic metre?
Yet the govt fails to act, to legislate this locally available option into being. WHY? Perhaps it's international cartels, currently holding the Australian buyer by the short and curlies.
We need a national gas grid and legislation that "obliges" local car builders to re-jig fuel intake system to allow CNG; or, as we do now with locally produced LPG, as after sales modifications.
Moreover, we could produce all the power needed by domestic users, by installing closed cycle, [no smell factor,] 2 tank systems, [local innovation,] that digests all the locally produced biological material and returns all the on demand peak hour power they need, via the production of methane; stored in simple bladders, and fed into whisper quiet ceramic fuel cells, which produces on demand energy.
A saleable energy surplus can be created by including all food scraps or waste.
There are any number of working examples overseas, but none here? WHY?
The by products include, endless free hot water, sanitised recyclable nutrient loaded effluent, and tons and tons of semi-solid sanitised high carbon, organic fertilizer, loaded with phosphorous and nitrates, currently flowing out to sea, and creating huge environmental problems!
All while we waste billions creating fertilizer from fully imported hydrocarbons, or import it as very finite increasingly costly phosphorous!
Rhrosty.

The governments decision to allow export of natural gas will at some
time in the future come back to haunt them.
They could reduce the uproar going on with coal seam gas and provide
us with a transport energy source that will last a long time until we
can transition to whatever will replace what we now have.

We already have an almost complete natural gas grid now, so with a link
to WA would enable a national natural gas supply for vehicles everywhere.
You could even have compressors in your own garage to refill the tank
in your own car.

Unfortunately governments just do not want to know.