This Fuel Crisis Was Avoidable, By George Christensen

Nation First reports on how Australia's fuel crisis, triggered by the Iran conflict, has exposed decades of political failure to secure domestic energy supply.

The global situation has escalated into one of the most severe energy shocks in modern history. The head of the International Energy Agency has warned that this crisis exceeds the oil shocks of the 1970s, combined with the fallout from the Ukraine war. Around 11 million barrels a day have been wiped from global supply, shipping routes are under threat, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil flows, has once again become a choke point. This is the kind of shock that cripples economies, and Australia is among the most vulnerable nations in the developed world.

More than 90 per cent of our fuel is imported. Domestic production has been declining for decades, and refineries have shut down one by one, leaving only two. We are a resource-rich nation that cannot fuel itself, and that vulnerability was identified, documented, and repeatedly warned about long before this crisis hit.

Back in 2018, retired Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn laid it out plainly. Australia had "no plan B", and in a major disruption, "we would have major problems within two weeks." The late Liberal Senator and former Army Major General Jim Molan warned at the time that if oil flows from the Gulf were disrupted, "any function which relies on aviation fuel, diesel fuels or petrol will cease within a few weeks," while Liberal MP and former SAS captain Andrew Hastie also said at the time there was a "significant risk" to national fuel security that would affect every Australian in a just-in-time economy. These defence figures were spelling out the risks in clear terms, and they were ignored.

Under Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, refinery capacity continued to collapse, and dependence deepened. As Energy Minister, Angus Taylor oversaw a system that remained critically exposed, while reviews were promised, delayed, and never meaningfully delivered. Now the consequences are arriving all at once, and Australians are being told there is nothing to worry about.

Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen continue to downplay the situation even as supplies tighten and shipments are cancelled. Australia still fails to meet the basic 90-day fuel reserve requirement that every other advanced economy adheres to, and instead, the public is reassured that roughly a month's worth of supply is sufficient. That reassurance collapses under even basic scrutiny, particularly when past warnings made clear how quickly shortages would cascade through the economy.

Even the Australia Institute acknowledges the scale of the problem in its own research. Australia is "almost entirely reliant on imports" and dangerously vulnerable to international supply disruptions. At the same time, Australia is sitting on enormous untapped resources. The US Energy Information Administration identified 403 billion barrels of shale oil across six basins, with 17.5 billion barrels considered recoverable, enough to supply Australia for roughly four decades at current consumption.

The issue has never been a lack of resources. It has been a lack of political will to develop them. The Great Australian Bight has long been identified as a potential source of billions of barrels, with projections suggesting it could support thousands of jobs and generate hundreds of billions in revenue over time. Exploration in the region has been conducted safely for decades, yet development has stalled. Onshore basins like the Canning and Beetaloo remain underdeveloped, with regulatory hostility, infrastructure gaps, and policy uncertainty discouraging investment.

Energy analyst Saul Kavonic has pointed out that Australia needs to show it actually welcomes investment and provides "a clear pathway to development." Instead, the message sent to industry has too often been the opposite, and capital has gone elsewhere. The result is a country that has the capacity to produce energy but has chosen not to, even as it becomes more dependent on imports from volatile regions.

Fuel powers every part of the economy, from transport and agriculture to mining and defence. When supply is disrupted, the effects move quickly and spread widely, exactly as earlier warnings predicted. Australia's fuel prices are tied directly to international benchmarks in Singapore and global crude markets, meaning that when prices surge globally, or the Australian dollar weakens, Australians absorb the full impact. There is no buffer and no meaningful control, only exposure.

In Queensland, however, there is at least a recognition of reality. The Crisafulli Government, through Natural Resources Minister Dale Last, has opened up the Taroom Trough, a 750 square kilometre exploration zone with the potential to become Australia's first major oil province in decades. Industry experts describe it as one of the most significant exploration opportunities in the country, capable of attracting billions in investment, supporting regional jobs, and restoring domestic production capacity.

That stands in stark contrast to the paralysis at the federal level, where warnings are dismissed even as the crisis unfolds in real time.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been direct about what needs to happen. He has called on the government to ramp up drilling and exploration "as soon as possible," warning that fossil fuels still supply 90 per cent of Australia's energy needs and that the country remains one of the most oil-dependent in the world. He has also made clear that Australia must urgently expand storage capacity and rebuild domestic production, rather than pretend the problem can be managed through short-term measures.

Nationals leader and former Resources Minister Matt Canavan has gone even further, pointing out that this situation did not appear overnight. "I've been banging the drum for the last decade that we need more fossil fuels," he said, calling for development of the Great Australian Bight, the Beetaloo Basin, and the Canning Basin. Every step of the way, he argues, those efforts were blocked by activists insisting fossil fuels could simply be phased out. Now, as he put it bluntly, those same voices are asking why they cannot fill up their cars.

The world still runs on fossil fuels, and until that changes in reality rather than theory, countries that refuse to produce their own will remain exposed to those that do.

Australia now faces the consequences of years of inaction. It is a country rich in energy but dependent on others for supply, a nation that had warnings, data, and opportunity, yet failed to act. The war on Iran did not create this vulnerability, but it has exposed it in the starkest possible terms, and Australians are now paying the price every time they pull up at the bowser.

https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/this-fuel-crisis-was-avoidable