Incitec is going to close the Brisbane plant because they can't get reasonably priced gas. Love the sarcasm but for the uninformed Australia is one of the major exporters of the cheapest natural gas in the world except it isn't for Australians, it was sold to an American company Chevron in a deal that would have made Harry Firestone blush. Simple folk might think it would be possible to ship the gas by pipeline across the continent to provide cheap gas for Australian industry and consumers but how could billionaires get a drink from that? Or that LNG could be shipped from the West Coast to the East Coast by tanker. Where's the profit in that? Instead plans are underway to buy cheap Australian gas from Japanese purchasers and to ship it all the way back to Westernport Bay in Victoria. Much better.
Australia once produced all its own urea and the industry was vigorously defended against cheap imports. Remember Mick Young shutting down imports to protect Adelaide and Wallaroo. Mick was a bit old fashioned, didn't understand modern economics and couldn't see past Australian factories providing well paying jobs for Australians.
By the way, urea is manufactured using gas irrespective of source and some estimates are two thirds of Chinese urea was made using coal gas.
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