Australia has a huge national security “Achilles’ heel” that could see our economy tank within 30 days. Now a town 8000km away is being asked to solve the problem.
The town of Winnie in Texas, close to the border with Louisiana, is a very long way from Australia – more than 8000 kilometres as the crow flies.
It’s an unremarkable place. Two freeways bisect its main street – itself a four-lane highway – that is lined with a branch of Texas First Bank, iconic diner Dairy Queen and a scattering of car dealerships, liquor stores and churches.
Yet, quite suddenly, Winnie has become central to Australia’s security and resilience in the face of a future crisis.
It’s not the town itself. But a few miles to the south east, in an area known as Big Hill, where the vast Texan flatlands become pockmarked with clearings.
These are entrances to a huge underground network of storage tanks that can hold up to millions of barrels of oil to be used in times of dire need.
It’s one of several sites that make up the US’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), designed so the country doesn’t run out of fuel should the unexpected happen. And in the past few months the Australian Government has scooped up almost $100 million of that fuel to “boost the nation’s long-term fuel security”.
But it has some scratching their heads about how Australia’s domestic fuel security is safeguarded by having that fuel stored half a world away from Australia.
“It‘s an issue of national security – having something in the US doesn’t provide for our national interest to be protected in the way that it should,” Labor leader Anthony Albanese said in April.
“It’s a solution but not the solution we need,” a security analyst has told news.com.au, adding the lack of fuel security was Australia’s “Achilles’ heel”.
AUSTRALIA HAS ONLY 30 DAYS OF PETROL
Signatories to the International Energy Agency, of which Australia is one, should have a minimum of 90 days oil on tap, “in the event of a severe oil supply disruption”.
According to the monthly Australia Petroleum Statistics report Australia had 79 days’ worth of fuel in April.
However, that figure includes not only fuel stored in Australia but also oil on ships heading our way and oil sitting at overseas terminals destined for Australia.
Take those away and Australia only has 61 days’ worth of fuel. Indeed, we haven’t had 90 days’ worth of fuel since 2012.
In terms of petrol and jet fuel, it’s worse. We have only 30 days’ worth in the national tank and a mere 20 days of diesel.
“The average person thinks of fuel security as fuel for the car. But it impacts across the economy,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) security analyst John Coyne told news.com.au.
“It’s high-grade jet fuel to deep fat fryer oil. It’s diesel, and petroleum products to make bitumen and plastics.”
Throughout the pandemic, Australians were assured that we produced three times the food we could consume. That’s true, but food security is dependent on oil security.
“If you don’t have fuel, you can’t go out and muster cattle; you can’t work the combine harvester, you can’t run the generators that irrigate the fields or fuel the trucks to move those commodities.”
Extracted from News.com.au