Outlook - 15 December 2015

Outlook for the 2015/16 season

“Inflows into the Goulburn, Broken, Loddon and Campaspe systems during November were tracking between the ‘Dry’ and the ‘Extreme Dry’ categories,” Dr Bailey said.

“Inflows into the Murray system were close to the ‘Dry’ category.”

The full inflow record was used to assess seasonal determinations for a range of inflow scenarios. The scenarios for different inflow conditions were produced using the following terminology:

Wet: Inflow volumes that have 10 chances in 100 (or one chance in 10) of being exceeded.

Average: Inflow volumes that have 50 chances in 100 (or five chances in 10) of being exceeded.

Dry: Inflow volumes that have 90 chances in 100 (or nine chances in 10) of being exceeded.

Extreme Dry: Inflow volumes that have 99 chances in 100 (or 9.9 chances in 10) of being exceeded.

The following tables summarise possible HRWS seasonal determinations in the Murray, Goulburn, Loddon, Campaspe and Broken systems through the 2015/16 season.  

Murray System Outlook for Seasonal Determination of High-Reliability Water Shares

Goulburn System Outlook for Seasonal Determination of High-Reliability Water Shares

Loddon System Outlook for Seasonal Determination of High-Reliability Water Shares

Campaspe System Outlook for Seasonal Determination of High-Reliability Water Shares

Broken System Outlook for Seasonal Determination of High-Reliability Water Shares

2015/16 Low-Reliability Water Share Outlooks

There is effectively no chance of seasonal determinations of low-reliability water shares being announced for any northern Victorian systems in 2015/16.

Trading Opportunities

The Goulburn system’s inter-valley trade (IVT) account owes about 85 GL to the Murray system on December 15. The Goulburn, Campaspe and Loddon systems can trade to the Victorian Murray system, New South Wales and South Australia while the total volume owed to the Murray system is less than 200 GL.

The Goulburn, Campaspe and Loddon systems can trade from the Victorian Murray system, New South Wales and South Australia while the total volume owed to the Murray system is greater than zero.

Allocation trade from New South Wales to Victoria is limited to the lesser of a net annual volume of 200 GL or a volume that keeps the risk of spill in the Murray system below 50 per cent. The spill risk limit allows more than 200 GL of trade, and so the net annual volume of 200 GL applies unless advised otherwise.

Customers participating in the water trading market can monitor trade availability on the Water Register website, waterregister.vic.gov.au/water-trading/allocation-trading.

Standard Murray-Darling Basin Authority policy prohibits the net trade of allocations from above the Barmah Choke to downstream to protect delivery of downstream water entitlements. However, there is currently about 170 GL of capacity available to trade from upstream to downstream. Customers can monitor trading opportunities across the Barmah Choke on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority website.

Upcoming Resource Manager announcements

• The next 2015/16 seasonal determination announcement will be released on Monday, January 4, 2016.

For information about the Resource Manager for northern Victorian regulated water systems, including seasonal determinations, resource availability and carryover volumes, please visit www.nvrm.net.au. The status of Victorian shares of Murray storages is available at www.mdba.gov.au/.

Information about El Niño is available from the Bureau of Meteorology at www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso.

Details of the December to February rainfall outlook and seasonal streamflow forecasts are available at www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks and seasonal streamflow forecasts are available at http://www.bom.gov.au/water/ssf/index.shtml