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Outsourcing national fuel reserve met with scepticism

ATA sees chaos if a crisis hits supply to transport and services

 

The federal government’s fudge of a national fuel reserve solution has been met with frustration at the Australian Trucking Association (ATA).

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor signs the new deal with US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette to lease space in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to store “and access Australian-owned oil during a global emergency”.

“This landmark Australia-US Arrangement represents our joint commitment to maintaining fuel security and improving Australia’s resilience, as well as strengthening the close bonds between our two great nations,” Taylor says.

“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s biggest emergency stockpile of oil.

“The US is a trusted ally which has been essential for global oil security and we are glad to be building on our strong, longstanding relationship, while ensuring Australia is best prepared to act during a global oil disruption.”

The federal government has refused consistently to recognise that any fuel supply crisis will have immediate impact on local transport and logistics or that, in the event of military hostilities, sea lanes will be vulnerable.

Critics also argue that Australia is also in breach of its International Energy Agency agreement for the amount of reserves any signatory should have, but the federal government sees this as having been resolved.

“Under International Energy Agency obligations, Australia is required to hold 90 days of oil reserves and can hold these reserves offshore where a bilateral arrangement is in place,” it says.


Road freight bodies have rung the alarm on fuel reserves before. Read it here.


But the plan fails to fire for the ATA, which insists an emergency store should be located in Australia.

“Liquid fuel is critical to trucking and critical for our economy,” ATA chair Geoff Crouch says.

“This is both a national economic issue and a national security issue.

“The United States is on the other side of a very wide ocean.

“The arrangement to meet Australia’s fuel security obligations by tapping into the US reserve is simply not realistic.

The ATA notes it and its members have campaigned since 2014 on Australia’s fuel security and, “concerned the government has unrealistic expectations about what would happen in a fuel shortage emergency”, made a detailed submission last year to the liquid fuel security review.

“We’re calling for domestic fuel security as well as the need to address the legal uncertainties that trucking businesses would face if expected by government to prioritise the delivery of particular goods during a fuel emergency,” Crouch says. 

“During a fuel emergency, there would be no guarantee that trucking businesses would have the commercial ability to implement government priorities.

“With our supply chains increasingly operating on a just-in-time delivery model, once trucks stop we quickly start running out of consumer goods.”  

 

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