ENERGY FORECASTS FOR WESTERN-AUSTRALIA 1992-2010

Both the rise in the price of oil and the discovery of natural gas hav e induced large-scale substitution among fuels in Western Australia. I n this study energy consumption in Western Australia is forecast with Bayesian vector autoregressions to 2010. Energy demand will change lit tle during the next two years, but it will resume growth when the econ omy recovers in the second half of the 1990s. Natural gas now accounts for close to 40% of energy consumption and its share is predicted to approach 50% by the turn of the century. Coal will remain a major sour ce of energy in Western Australia