The Australian Government is looking to access the US’s strategic petroleum reserve.
However, Australian Trucking Association (ATA) chair Geoff Crouch says Australia’s emergency fuel reserves must be held in Australia.
“Liquid fuel is critical to trucking and critical to our economy. This is both a national economic issue and a national security issue,” Crouch says.
“The United States is on the other side of a very wide ocean. The proposal to meet Australia’s fuel security obligations by tapping into the US reserve is, as a result, simply not viable.”
Crouch says the US reserve would not provide security for the Australian economy, should there be a disruption to international supply chains.
The Australian Government’s interim fuel security report found that at the end of 2018, Australia had only 18 consumption days of petrol and 22 consumption days of diesel in stock.
Australia’s fuel stocks were not available equally across the country, the report found.
The ATA is concerned about the government’s unrealistic expectations about what would happen in a fuel shortage emergency and has been campaigning about the need to prioritise Australia’s fuel security.
“Without trucks, Australia stops. Without fuel, supermarkets go empty, medicines don’t get delivered and waste services don’t get emptied. The government’s own just-released freight strategy identifies that most commodities produced or consumed in Australia are delivered by road,” Crouch says.
The ATA is calling for domestic fuel security in their submission, as well as the need for the government to address legal uncertainties that trucking businesses would face if a fuel emergency happened.
“During a fuel shortage emergency, there is no guarantee that trucking businesses would have the commercial ability to implement government priorities, and with our supply chains increasingly operating on a just-in-time delivery model, once trucks stop we quickly start running out of consumer goods,” Crouch adds.
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