The company’s Australasian managing consultant Dr John Feenan told an Australian Pipeline Industry Association seminar in Brisbane by that time demand in southeast Australia would outstrip supply.

The future of the PNG-Queensland pipeline is no clearer today although Feenan said the report took into account the lines likely development by 2010.

Despite the increasing reliance of coal bed methane in Queensland and New South Wales and the development of the Otway and Gippsland Basin gas fields, the report’s projections indicated a clear shortfall after 2015.

The only solution to the supply/demand problem would be imported gas from either Western Australia or the Northern Territory, leading to Moomba becoming a major transmission hub as its role as a production hub declines.

Feenan added that construction on a trans-continental pipeline could take five years, which means that governments would need to give serious consideration to starting work on such a project in the next 2-5 years to ensure the infrastructure is online by 2015.

Earlier this year the Federal Government and the WA resources industry resurrected plans for a $3 billion trans-Australian gas pipeline from Karratha to Adelaide.

The planned 2900km-long pipeline, would carry gas from WA's Greater North-West Shelf, which includes the proposed Gorgon venture, to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and even Hobart.

It would either be funded entirely by industry, with tax incentives, or be subsidised by the State or Commonwealth governments.

Woodside Energy is reportedly examining a separate plan to carry gas from the Browse Basin in the Kimberley 2200km to the Moomba pipeline hub. The project would cost about $1 billion less than the Government proposal and could link the giant undeveloped Scott Reef and Brecknock gas fields with markets in the east.