An Australian defence analyst who warned of Australia’s precarious fuel supply problem more than a decade ago says politicians were told to “keep quiet” about the vulnerability and focus on election issues.
John Blackburn, a retired fighter pilot and former Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Air Force, wrote a report surrounding Australia’s liquid fuel security commissioned by the NRMA in 2014.
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At the time, Blackburn was “horrified” by how dependent the nation was on overseas oil, and how fragile Australia’s supply chain had become.
“As I went through our fuel supply chain, looking through what the NRMA was interested in, I was stunned,” he said.
“But I tell you what, we’re worse off today than we were back then in some ways, and that’s a sad indictment of where we are.
“Back then we had seven refiners, we have two now. 25 years ago, 40 per cent of all our fuel came through Australian refineries and now it’s less than 10 per cent.
“We haven’t made any progress. In fact, we’ve gone backwards.”
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The defence expert says a lack of progress in fuel security is a “sad indictment” on the nation.
“I’ve done a lot of stuff with politicians from each side, and there are some very good individual politicians,” he said.
“But here’s the bottom line … Individuals knew, ‘hey, we needed to do something serious about this’, but the leadership of the parties said ‘it’s not an election issue, keep quiet about it’.”
He said the focus on three-year election cycles left little room for proper planning.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen told reporters this week that Australia’s fuel stocks remained “secure” and that shortages across the country were due to “a huge spike in demand, not an impact on supply”.
Labor MP and Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth clashed with Today host Karl Stefanovic on the Today show this week, insisting that “there isn’t an issue with supply when it comes to fuel”, and that “the suggestion that there is a crisis in fuel supply in this country is incorrect”.
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Australia is the only member country in the International Energy Agency that does not meet agreed standards for fuel reserves – and it has not done so for 15 years.
Recognising Australia’s vulnerability, Blackburn’s report urged the government a decade ago to “move beyond a ‘just in time’ supply chain to a ‘just in case’ supply chain”.
It found that, while Australia’s refining capacity is being reduced and our liquid fuel supply chain is in decline, demand is increasing in a situation that was “clearly not sustainable”.
“Since 2000, our dependence on imported liquid fuel and oil for transport has grown from around 60 per cent to over 90 cent of our transport fuel demand,” Blackburn’s report said.
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“There is no plan to stop our dependency growing to 100 per cent or to halt the further decline of our fuel security. The implications of this situation are serious and affect all Australians.”
It found that Australia’s transport system, and in turn, society “is almost wholly oil dependent” and that “we are at risk if we experience supply chain interruptions or a reduction in the availability of affordable oil supplies in the future”.
“While our ‘just in time’ oil and liquid fuel supply chains work well under normal circumstances or under small scale or short duration interruptions, the resilience of the supply chains and associated infrastructure under a wider range of plausible scenarios has not been assessed.”
That test has arrived.
And 10 years on from the NRMA report into fuel security, little has changed.
Rather than prepare for global supply shortages by reinforcing local refineries or stockpiling fuel, successive governments on both sides of politics simply hoped that the nation’s reliance on imported fuel would not be challenged.
Blackburn put solar panels on his roof and bought an electric car as soon as he realised how fragile the nation’s fuel supply network has become.
He warned that the Albanese Government’s strategy in the current crisis may be to ride it out and hope people move on to another problem soon.
“It depends on how long this goes,” he said.
“We’ve got a half-life or memory of about a week or two on most issues, sometimes it’s only 48 hours in the media.
“If it gets resolved quickly … then I’ll guarantee within 6 months, [the Government will say] ‘we handled that, okay? Don’t worry about it’, that will be the atmosphere.”
