Credit for the change goes to the Malaysian oil giant, Petronas, which has waded into the fast-growing coal seam methane industry with a $2.5 billion offer to buy a 40% slice of the Gladstone liquefied gas project proposed by Santos.
The proposed Petronas price has already indirectly affected a takeover bid by the BG Group for Origin Energy. It changes everything in the CSM business, and perhaps in the wider Australian petroleum business.
According to what Slugcatcher has seen of the Petronas/Santos deal, there is an implied value of $1.65 per gigajoule being placed on 3P (proven, probable and possible) coal seam gas reserves.
Origin reckons that if that Petronas price was placed on its coal seam gas then its 10,000 petajoules of 3P reserves would be worth $16.5 billion, or $3 billion more than BG was offering for all of Origin, including its extensive retail gas and electricity businesses.
No one is accusing BG of trying to steal Origin, but that would have been the result if its revised offer price of $15.50 had been accepted.
It is now likely that BG, if it wants to proceed with its takeover of Origin, will have to pay somewhere closer to $20 a share.
The problem for BG, which is Australia's win courtesy of Petronas, is that a new price regime has been created by its entry into the Queensland CSM business.
Slugcatcher, who is not yet a believer in the viability of CSM-based LNG, has to acknowledge that when someone slaps $2.5 billion on the table it would be wise to re-assess any prior positions.
In time, The Slug might be forced to admit he was wrong, but right now all he's admitting is that Petronas has changed the game, that BG has a problem, and that every owner of CSM, or natural gas for that matter, is considerably richer.
The entry of Petronas raises key issues, not the least of which is that it signals the end of the sometimes strained relationship between two near neighbours, which famously flared when Malaysia's Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Australia's Paul Keating called each other rude names, and trade relations between the two countries suffered.
But, the really important aspect to the Petronas investment is that it underlines the potential creation of an entirely new business for Australia, and perhaps the world.
Until now, coal seam methane has been considered suitable only for domestic markets because of its low pressure and low heating value.
If, as Santos, BG and Petronas seem to be saying with their multi-billion investment plans, the game really has changed, and there is enough CSM in the ground to support an export industry, then Australia could be sitting pretty with the potential to develop a series of LNG projects based on coal gas.
The trick, as ever, will be in proving the technology exists to extract the gas in sufficient volumes as well as deliver it to liquefaction facilities in a way that enables constant operation.
One thing that can seriously hurt the financial performance of an LNG plant is erratic supply, or shutdowns in supply.
Events such as those are well into the future, and before then Australia looks like it's going to have a lot of fun developing a new industry, with a large piece of it funded with Malaysian money - perhaps an event to cause Dr Mahathir to spin in his swivel chair.
