Please, we have plundered the earth's resources quite enough. Let's look at renewable sources more. Why is Australia, full of solar rays, wind and waves, so far behind the rest of the world in R & D into these technologies?
I have an issue with some of the figures you put forward. Could you say where they have come from? They don't quite sound kosher to me.

Who knows how long this gas will last or whether some of it will be harder to access than we think? Certainly Arnie doesn't want the Aussie LNG terminal off Malibu but I'm sure other customers will take up the slack. Some of those customers could be in southeastern Australia as their reserves deplete. The fact that several large trucking companies are moving to compressed natural gas (CNG) in lieu of diesel could start a rush.

I find it odd that coal seam methane is said to be a good thing since it will escape anyway and burning it has less greenhouse effect. Yet we are assured that CO2 scrubbed from natural gas wells will most assuredly stay underground if re-injected. I don't think it is a bad thing if much of this natural gas is conserved for the long term. It's almost too good to burn just for electrical generation.

Kelvin

I too am incredulous as to why the blooming obvious is being studiously ignored by policy makers. However I am pretty confident that industry will not be so blinded. The moment a carbon trading scheme gets the go ahead you can bet that investors in new generation will favour the substantially lower investment risk profile offered by combined cycle gas compared to either gen IV nuclear or coal with carbon capture.

Who is going to take the risk on investing in unproven technologies until there have been dozens of working examples internationally to rely upon?

But don't think you are a lone voice on this issues. Try these reports on methods of achieving the required emissions cuts for Australia. Both see a substantial role for gas:
"Options for moving towards a lower emission future" by AGL, Frontier Economics and WWF-Australia; or
"A Clean Energy Future for Australia" by Saddler, Diesendorf & Dennis

They are both available from:

http://wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/publications

Yes we do have large natural gas reserves.
However we should not be exporting it at all.
It is not really suitable as a vehicle fuel.
This was a surprise to me as my son's father in law explained;
He was on a UK government committee that was appointed to study suitable
alternaive transport fuels. Who said governments do not know of peak oil ?
Natural gas has the big disadvantage that the tank has to be totally
empty before refuelling takes place. It appears that if this is not done
one of the constituants of natural gas increasing in concentration
and can destroy the engine.
This applies to all the tanks and pipes in the system.

Natural gas should be kept for the manufacturee of fertiliser which is
one of its current products. It is used to produce LPG and plastics.
It really is too valuable to burn. Will the grandchildren say;
"You burned all that stuff ?"

I dunno Bazz. It seems pretty effective.

It's not like Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) cars are anything new. My family drove one in New Zealand about sixteen years ago, before they were phased out.

Worked fine. I don't see why we can't go back to them.

T R/L;
Sure it wasn't LPG ?