Gas hippopotomus crushes reservation again

Tuesday 26 May 2026

A draft framework for the reservation system released by the government on Monday confirms it will require producers to sell the equivalent of 20% of their LNG exports into the local market.

[Madeleine King] said there were ways to achieve that goal without breaching the contracts struck with customers in Japan, South Korea, China and other key markets for Australian LNG.

“All exporters will have a commitment to the domestic market – that is a really important principle of what we are trying to achieve, and that goes alongside the commitment that no one will be forced to break existing contracts,” King said.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.