IT’S LOGICAL Mermaid Marine Australia Limited’s future is now inextricably linked to the oil and gas industry. Oil continues to be the main attraction to explorers because of its lower infrastructure costs, early cash flow and easier marketing, but it is gas, which is emerging as the premier fuel. Gas is  clean, portable, in massive supply and the environmental answer to so many of today’s atmospheric problems. Together with its sister product, condensate it is also the dominant feedstock for the petrochemical industry. In Australia . . . gas has a  very, very great future . From all sources, our country consumes or exports a modest total of approximately  one trillion cubic feet of gas each year. Gas is found in a number of places around Australia, but over 90% of national reserves are found offshore of northwestern Australia, where current estimates of gas in place comfortably exceed  100 trillion cubic feet . These reserves were effectively found as a co-product in the search for oil, yet on today’s economics, only  one trillion cubic feet of gas with the appropriate production infrastructure in place is estimated to be worth  $A5 billion dollars . Therefore it may be simplistic, but true, that the undiscounted value of the gas in Australia’s northwest, is so far worth a staggering  $500 billion dollars and rising . Despite these mind bending numbers, existing production taps far less than  half of 1%  of this huge resource each year,  a resource which increases almost by accident, from exceedingly modest levels of exploration for oil. We at Mermaid recognise that these are solid and compelling reasons to focus our attention unwaveringly on this industry, within this region. To build the company’s seagoing assets and strategically blessed shore bases at Dampier, Broome and Darwin with all speed. To lift our professional expertise and productive capability to meet what we have assessed to be an amazing and highly exclusive opportunity.