For the better part of two decades, the answer to the question of what powers the Australian economy has been axiomatic: Western Australia.
Iron ore, LNG and the capital formation that follows them have made the west the benchmark against which every resources jurisdiction is measured. It is telling, then, that the more interesting question of 2026 concerns a jurisdiction one tenth its size. Can the Northern Territory become the next cylinder in Australia’s economic engine? And is Texas, of all places, the more instructive comparison?
Later this month, together with a delegation of Territory businesses, I will travel to Houston, Corpus Christi and Midland with the Northern Territory Government’s US Shale Gas Business Delegation to examine precisely that question. The premise behind the trip deserves stating plainly: the opportunity is genuine and the comparison is instructive.The question is what the Territory – both government and the private sector – needs to do to capitalise on the opportunity at hand and position itself as a credible partner in developing a globally significant gas resource.
Speaking with Daniel McCormick, CEO of Industry Capability Network NT (ICNNT) ahead of the trade mission, earlier this month he commented:
“The scale of the Beetaloo opportunity is significant, but realising its full potential will require Territory businesses to be ready to respond as development scales. That requires early visibility of upcoming opportunities, giving businesses the confidence to invest in their people, equipment, systems and capabilities before demand arrives.
“The real measure of success, however, will be our ability to derive lasting economic benefit beyond royalties alone. Contracts awarded to Territory businesses with a genuine presence here, and wages that stay and circulate in the Territory rather than hopping on a plane and flying elsewhere, are where we build lasting industrial capability and meaningful employment pathways for Territorians – and for those willing to become Territorians.”
Start with the numbers
The Territory’s gross state product reached $34.0 billion in 2024-25, expanding 1.0% in a year NT Treasury itself characterised as among the weaker results of the jurisdictions. No serious adviser in Darwin contends the Territory is poised to eclipse an economy of Western Australia’s magnitude. That is not the contention.
The contention concerns trajectory. NT Treasury forecasts GSP growth accelerating from 1.0% in 2024-25 to 2.7% in 2025-26 as Darwin LNG returns to full production, and to 5.8% in 2026-27 as the Ichthys and Darwin LNG plants operate at or near capacity, a rate that would place the Territory among the fastest growing economies in the nation. Beneath that headline sits a more consequential shift. In September 2026, gas from the Beetaloo Sub-basin began flowing into the Territory’s power grid for the first time. The Beetaloo is estimated to hold in the order of 500 trillion cubic feet of gas, ranking it among the most significant shale resources globally. The Commonwealth’s Beetaloo Strategic Basin Plan projects that development could sustain 6,000 jobs by 2040 and contribute between $18.0 billion and $36.8 billion in economic activity over the same horizon. The NT Government’s own figures, cited at the September 2026 first-gas milestone, put the jobs number higher still at more than 13,000 by 2040, alongside a narrower economic value estimate of over $17 billion over the following two decades.
Add the estimated $8.2 billion in defence infrastructure investment programmed for the Territory over the coming decade, and the pipeline behind a $34 billion economy assumes a very different complexion from the pipeline behind a mature one. Measured by proportionate impact per project, no Australian jurisdiction approaches it.
Why Texas is the better comparison
The Western Australian comparison flatters neither party. That economy was assembled over decades on iron ore at globally dominant scale, and the Territory will not replicate it. The more instructive parallel is the Permian Basin of West Texas. Midland and Odessa languished through the 1980s and 1990s in the aftermath of the oil bust. The shale techniques that took hold in the early 2010s regenerated the region, in the assessment of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, converting a written-off corner of Texas into the engine of American energy production within a decade.
The lesson from Midland is not geological. It is distributional: who captured the value. The businesses that prospered were overwhelmingly those already present, the contractors, fabricators, transport operators, caterers and service firms that made themselves ready before the majors arrived, and the landowners who learned to negotiate with operators as commercial equals. The delegation’s itinerary runs through Houston boardrooms and Midland field operations for precisely that reason. The Territory holds the rare advantage of studying the playbook before the play.
The overlooked Territory
The Territory’s structural disadvantage deserves naming, and it is neither geology nor distance. It is credibility by assumption. Investment committees in Sydney, Singapore and Canberra routinely treat the NT as a frontier posting rather than a functioning market with established professional infrastructure, experienced contractors and landholders who have managed complex negotiations for generations. The Territory is habitually overlooked as a credible partner. That perception gap is precisely where the opportunity resides for those prepared to look closer.
The evidence is already visible on the ground. Several of the Territory’s pastoral operators, enterprises outsiders would file under agriculture, have spent recent years collaborating with exploration companies on access, infrastructure and services, and have prospered from it. They treated the industry’s arrival as a commercial negotiation to prepare for rather than a disruption to endure. The same posture is available to the Territory’s construction, electrical, civil engineering, welding, transport, hospitality and tourism businesses as Beetaloo development scales.
What getting ready actually means
The phrase Territory businesses will hear incessantly over the next five years is gas ready. Stripped of the jargon, it means being the business a major operator can say yes to. Operators, head contractors and financiers interrogate the same fundamentals before awarding work: whether the corporate structure can bear the contract, whether cash flow can withstand 60-day payment terms at triple the volume, whether financial reporting would survive a prequalification review, and whether workforce, safety and insurance arrangements scale. None of it is glamorous. All of it is determined long before the tender is drafted. The businesses that fared best in Texas were ready before they were asked.
The same discipline applies in reverse to international and interstate entrants weighing the Territory. Those that succeed will establish properly at the outset: the right structure, the right registrations, a realistic appraisal of the Darwin market, and relationships, including with the land councils, cultivated early and honestly.
So, can it become Texas?
Not literally, and not imminently. The Permian accumulated a century of infrastructure, capital depth and workforce capability before the shale decade made it resemble an overnight success. But the question was never whether Darwin becomes Houston. It is whether the Territory can replicate what West Texas achieved: converting a resource endowment into a broad regional economy in which local businesses, traditional owners and new entrants each capture a durable share of the value.
On the evidence of the past twelve months, first gas flowing, data centres rising in Darwin CBD, new mines breaking ground, defence investment compounding, and a delegation of Territory businesses boarding flights to Houston to study the playbook at first hand, the Territory has stopped waiting to be taken seriously and started conducting itself as though the answer is yes.
Get in touch
If you are a Territory business looking to become ‘gas-ready’, or an international business looking to establish in the NT, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
