Gas (as in gas not petrol because petrol isn't a gas you stupid Americans, it's a liquid) used to be really cheap in Oz then it got popular for cars and guess what happened ... dribble like below ...
Australian LPG prices reflect the fact that LPG is an internationally traded commodity and influenced by international prices. The international benchmark for the cost of Australian LPG is the Saudi Aramco Contract Price, also commonly called the Saudi CP. The Saudi CP is expressed in US dollars per tonne. As the international price is in US dollars, the Australian dollar exchange rate also affects the Australian price of LPG.
This is the same for all internationally traded commodities. Agricultural and natural resource products are similar to LPG, in that they are subject to the prevailing price in international commodity markets. Australia does not have an influence on LPG price benchmarks, as our production of LPG is small compared to worldwide production. The same is true for the Australian pricing of crude oil and refined products, which are also linked to international prices.
The thing is that Oz has massive gas reserves and daily excess and we not only export about 40% of it, we burn about 20% of it daily. The "International market equality" bullshit gets a bit hard to take. Saudi pulls their own fuel out of the ground so why are they 12 cents per litre, they're on the same International market ...
So America, take on the gas engines and it will just end up status quo - down down, deeper and down.
What Cheapie did not explain is that LPG prices in Australia have gone up from around 60c to 90c this year. So called international forces, bla bla bla. It is ofcourse price gouging the motorist, the same as the price of petrol is 20 or 30c too high also. Because the Supermarket chains now control the retail petrol market.
LPG is a by product of petrol production, though with a Labor / Green Government we may not have any refinerys left in Oz soon!
In SA our much lamented previous Treasurer played hard ball with Mobil who just closed up shop, losing the state a major asset
From what I understand, and may be wrong is that natural gas can be refined with minimal work to run LPG cars. Viable I do not know. But we evidently [in Oz] are selling gas to the Chinese for a few cents a litre.
But it seems cannot convert our coal fired Electricity generation to gas, which it seems we are giving away!