“Without action, the east coast of Australia faces projected shortfalls by 2028 and the west coast by 2030,” she said.

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Market volatility could increase and drive up prices for households and businesses already battling inflation and other cost-of-living pressures.

But O’Neill welcomed a national gas strategy based on “facts and data, not ideology and wishful thinking”.

“Ensuring our industry can continue to supply safe, reliable and affordable energy is not just in our industry’s interest – it is in the national interest ... it is a good and noble cause,” she said.

Environmentalists want federal minister Madeleine King to resign over the newly released national gas strategy, accusing the federal government of “intentional deception” by justifying the expansion of gas with “offsetting and carbon pollution dumping”.

Yet the Moomba carbon capture and storage project in South Australia, set up by Santos and Beach Energy, aims to store 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Chevron Australia already captures carbon at its LNG operations beneath Barrow Island in Western Australia to bring down its overall carbon footprint, but rates of storage are only about one-third of where Chevron would like them to be, and not the promised four million tonnes a year.

Minister King said progress on carbon capture had been disappointing, but she was “optimistic for the prospects for carbon capture and storage in Australia”.

“There’s no reason to abandon the potential of a technology that is needed to help to get us to net zero - just imagine if we talked about hydrogen that way,” she said.

Australia also plans to ship in carbon emissions from trading partners and pump it deep under the sea floor.

The 2024/25 federal budget allocated $32.6 million over four years to establish regulations and bilateral agreements for future carbon management services to the Asia-Pacific region.

International carbon transfer services from Korea, Japan and Singapore could make Australia a carbon storage hub.

The reporter travelled with the support of Chevron Australia.

AAP