One of the first tasks of the corporation was the construction of a centralised brown coal fuelled gasification plant at Morwell.
[2] The Lurgi Gasification Plant opened in Morwell in 1956,[2] which used the German Lurgi process to produce gas, that was transferred to Melbourne via a high pressure gas pipeline.
Natural gas was discovered in Bass Strait by Esso and BHP in 1965.
By 1969 the production plant and distribution network were complete, allowing natural gas to be sold to consumers,[8][9] and a natural gas conversion program took place over the next 20 months, ending in December 1970.
The corporation's headquarters, the Princes Gate Towers on Flinders Street, built in 1967, were demolished in 1997 to make way for the Federation Square development.