Energy top of agenda after landmark deal

PetroChina has agreed to buy $50 billion worth of liquefied natural gas from ExxonMobil's yet-to-be developed Gorgon project in Western Australia, making it Australia's biggest-ever export contract.

Senior government ministers Martin Ferguson (Resources and Energy) and Simon Crean (Trade) are emphasising the environmental benefits of the deal, linking it to action on climate change.

"LNG is part of a movement to low emissions fuel economy because it is clean energy," Mr Ferguson told ABC Radio from Beijing on Wednesday.

The deal, which comes a week after a $25 billion agreement to supply gas to India, was important to Australia because of its commercial benefits, he said.

"But it's also important to India and China that we also go forward on the climate change challenge."

Mr Crean hailed the agreement as the single biggest trade deal in Australia's history. "But it is the great deal from China in terms of a clean-energy source," he said, adding that Australia had a huge comparative advantage in clean energy.

The Gorgon plant would be "world leading" in terms of carbon capture and storage. "We're not just selling the gas, we're also selling the technology."

The latest deal had been in doubt because of tensions between Canberra and Beijing over the arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu and the visit to Australia by Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

Mr Crean said trade underpinned most international relationships. "This is another example of the importance of the inter-relationship between Australia and China."

$50b Gorgon deal was our work: Coalition

The former Howard government deserves credit for the landmark $50 billion gas deal between Australia and China, not Labor, Liberal frontbencher Joe Hockey says.

Australia has secured it's biggest-ever export contract under a deal that will export $50 billion worth of liquefied natural gas to China.

The federal government has lauded it as the foundation for big investment in Australia's resources.

But coalition MPs are adamant the record deal is their handiwork. "Individual projects ... take years to get running and the platform for these initiatives, of course, was built over the last few years under the coalition government," Mr Hockey told reporters on Wednesday.

"The suggestion that it's all a creation of Kevin Rudd's is a fiction."

Gas sold to China too cheaply: Greens

Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne criticised the government for selling the gas from Gorgon too cheaply.

"These deals have been shown time and time again to have been done in a way that is very cheap and in the long term not in the best interests of the country," she told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson needed to tell Australia what his plan for peak oil was, given that gas was needed as a transition fuel to cleaner energy, she said.

"We need to have gas. "If Martin Ferguson thinks we're going to liquefy coal to run our transport fleet while selling gas to China then clearly he doesn't understand climate change."

There was no indication the government would invest any of the profits into renewable energy either, she said.

Senator Milne said what the government had also done was, once again, "wipe their boots" on Environment Minister Peter Garrett who was now under pressure to tick off the environmental credentials of the deal.