There is a repeated and concerted effort in Australia to spread the
meme that "if there was a problem with oil purchases, Australian
society would grind to a halt", which is propaganda for "we need to
create fear, so a enough folks complain to the government, so as to
justify the government buying high-priced oil company stocks just
before the world goes predominantly electric".
----- Forwarded message from Zenaan Harkness -----
From: Zenaan Harkness
To: Jim
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2018 21:25:49 +1000
Subject: Re: A Reason for Bed Wetting – Australia has less than 30 day’s supply of fuel and oil.
Jim,
this was my answer the last time this rubbish was trotted out, this
is my answer again.
Australia has something like 300 years of gas, and gas conversion
kits for trucks are only a year away from manufacture - if the will
(or necessity) is there to build them - gas or dual-fuel cars and
utes are not uncommon, in Australia.
So we, in Australia, will be JUST FINE.
Please re-read the below.
We do NOT want the Australian government paying a premium for oil
company stocks, just before the world's cars go electric, as some
sort of bullshit NON-insurance for "they'll stop selling us oil".
Seriously - this one's total bullshit, Jim.
Kind regards,
Zen
On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 06:38:42PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Jim, Roger Crook is evidently a propagandist for the oil industry -
e.g. the implication arises from his writings that Australia "is
woefully behind the EU in goverment-mandated oil industry stocks to
be owned by government", which is total hogwash of course - cars are
going electric, and the oil industry giants (and hedge funds) are
simply looking to make some massive, premium-priced, share sales to
the Australian government, since our government, SENSIBLY, does not
own oil stocks at this point in history - that's a bloody good thing!
Roger Crook is however, a great fear monger and yarn teller, and
propagandist. Evidently!
:)
Zenaan
On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 06:24:48PM +1000, Jim wrote:
This article is essential reading for all Australians and politicians. The author Roger Crook should be an advisor to the federal and state governments on this vital issue of national interest and security. The problem is why have such gross idiocy, incompetence and negligence in Australian politics, I’m surprised anything of importance gets accomplished.
Jim
http://globalfarmer.com.au/2017/06/reason-bed-wetting-australia-less-30-days... A Reason for Bed Wetting – Australia has less than 30 day’s supply of fuel and oil.
Roger Crook http://globalfarmer.com.au/author/roger/ / June 5, 2017 http://globalfarmer.com.au/2017/06/reason-bed-wetting-australia-less-30-days...
If anything serious happens in world affairs, like a little war,
which interrupts for a couple of weeks the flow of fuel tankers
reaching Australia, life as we know it will very quickly grind to a
halt. Australia has less than 30 days supply of fuel and oil in the
country. Farmers will unable to sow or harvest their crops. They
will be unable to get their produce to market whether it be grain,
livestock or fresh food. It is said that everything at some time in
its life is moved by truck. Take a long look at Fig 3 below and
calculate how long you can manage without your medicines at home
and in the hospital and how long you can manage for food if there
isn’t any in the supermarket. The freight trains will stop. The
power stations that rely on coal will have to dig into their
reserves and then what? No fuel for the coal trains. There is just
three days supply of petrol in the petrol stations. When that runs
out how do the kids get to school and how do the majority get to
work?
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Jim -----
From: Jim
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2018 19:40:46 +1000
Subject: Low fuel reserves: Australia’s 43 days before ‘real trouble’
If you need any more evidence of gross government negligence,
incompetence and borderline treason, then consider the news article
below and the fact Australia has a strategic fuel reserve of only 43
days, instead of the international standard of 90 days. A major
conflict in the Middle East or with China could effectively cuts
supplies of refined fuel to Australia within 20 days, resulting in
our economy and social cohesion disintegrating swiftly.
Everything in our economy depends on fuel: private and commercial
transport of people, food and products, social services,
manufacturing, mining, agriculture etc.
Neither of the major parties appears to have a national energy policy
that properly addresses our energy security seriously.
Successive Liberal and Labor governments have eroded and compromised
our national security by allowing most of our oil refineries and
heavy manufacturing industries to close down, forcing us to source
the majority our fuel from Singapore and other countries. Australia
no longer has the capability to be a self-sufficient producer of
refined oil and manufactured products during a world crisis that
affects oil supplies.
Jim
____________
This is borderline treason. The government is assigned the security
for this great country of ours and must be held accountable, under no
circumstance should any of our abilities to defend this nation be
eroded. As a first class democratic nation the public should be
demanding our security be assured. With the current climate of war
and violence in this world we should be almost mobilizing. Waiting
until the war breaks out before trying to increase reserves and
supplies is tantamount to treason and should be treated as such.
Jeff Dunne
Low fuel reserves: Australia’s 43 days before ‘real trouble’
AUSTRALIA is set for “real trouble” with supply of one of its major
commodities expected to run out in a matter of days, experts warn.
news.com.au http://www.news.com.au/
Megan Palin http://www.news.com.au/the-team/megan-palin
April 16, 2018
AUSTRALIA is in “real trouble” of running out of fuel by the end of
next month in the wake of the Syria strikes, according to experts.
The International Energy Agency mandates that countries hold a stock
in reserve “equivalent to 90 days of net imports” but Australia only
has 43 days worth of supply, The Australian
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/molan-issues-warning-over-...
reports.
Liberal Senator Jim Molan, a former major general in the Australian
Army, this morning told 2GB that “we stand in real trouble and this
is a single point of failure for Australia, very similar to what
could happen in a cyber situation”.
He said the government had taken a “business as usual approach” and
that it was now time to “see action”.
“It happens because for too long we have taken a business as usual
approach,” Mr Molan said.
“It’s like saying we can determine the size and shape of the
Australian Defence Force based on commercial factors and making the
market decide.
“The way that we seem to get around this is that we buy credits
overseas which ignores the entire problem.
“Those credits say that if things go wrong we can buy from overseas
but hang on our supply lines of communication by ship are likely to
be either threatened or because of insurers nothing will come to us
at all.”
According to Mr Molan, Australia has just three weeks’ of motor fuel
stocks and an eruption of tension in our region could immobilise
civilian and military vehicles.
“I can’t imagine that armoured vehicles in the forces in the near
future are going to work off renewables or off electricity or off
whatever,” Mr Molan told Sky News today.
It would be difficult to keep Australian vehicles going should there
be conflict in the Middle East, Korea, or elsewhere in our
neighbourhood, he said.
This will be a prominent problem for the next Chief of the Defence
Force Angus Campbell
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today announced General Campbell
would take over from the retiring Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin in
June.
Liberal Senator Jim Molan at Parliament House in Canberra.
Liberal Senator Jim Molan at Parliament House in Canberra. Source:
News Corp Australia
Mr Molan, whose military career includes serving as Chief of
Operations in 2004 at the headquarters of the Multinational Force in
Iraq, today outlined the risks he saw.
He said 60 per cent of the engine fuel used by Asia came from the
Gulf.
“So we see streams of ships coming round from the Gulf, coming across
the Indian Ocean, going through the straits through the South China
Sea to where it’s refined for us,” he told Sky News.
“It’s refined in Singapore, yes, but it’s also refined in Japan, in
Korea and in China. It then is turned into diesel, aviation fuel and
petrol and comes down in ships to Australia’s ports.”
Earlier this year, Mr Molan said Australia was one of the few places
in the world that didn’t have a government-mandated strategic reserve
of fuel.
According to him, if Australia’s current stockpiles of petrol, diesel
and aviation fuel ran dry then the military would effectively be
grounded in that time.
How is an island country like Australia "secure" in the military
sense if we don't refine oil & have no, substantial strategic fuel
reserve?
— Prof. Peter Doherty (@ProfPCDoherty)
https://twitter.com/ProfPCDoherty/status/631972844205793280?ref_src=twsrc%5E...
August 13, 2015
Defence Strategy and Capability at the Australian Strategic Policy
Institute senior analyst Dr Malcolm Davis backed Mr
http://www.news.com.au/technology/new-senator-and-retired-military-chief-jim...
Molan’s comments, saying Australia’s fuel reserves would last “20
days at best” if supplies were cut off. He said Australia was “one of
the few countries in the world that does not take our energy security
seriously”.
“It would be a Mad Max world. Our society and our economy would begin
to fall apart very quickly,” Dr Davis told news.com.au.
“It’s like electricity — everything depends on fuel to make an
economy run. It is very serious.
“We’ve left ourselves in a perilous situation and governments on both
sides have been negligent in this regard.
“Military analysts have been warning consistently for years and they
just ignore it.”
Dr Davis explained most of Australia’s fuel is transported through
narrow straights by tanker ships.
“Instead of investing in refinement facilities here for refining
fuel, the government has decided it’s cheaper to do it overseas.”
One of the key facilities is in Singapore.
“The price they pay for that in a crisis is that China can interrupt
flow to Australia relatively easy and our economy falls apart.
“It’s very negligent of the government to let this situation happen.
It’s even more appalling we’ve been warning both political parties
for years about this.”
Dr Davis warned the US military had become severely depleted since
the Bush administration and said China, Iran, North Korea and Russia
had become “direct threats”.
US President Donald Trump hailed Saturday’s strike targeting Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities as mission
accomplished. The strikes were in response to a suspected poison gas
attack by Assad in the Damascus suburb of Douma last weekend.
Australia has backed the mission, with Mr Turnbull calling it “a
calibrated, proportionate and targeted response”.
Mr Molan expects Russia to retaliate. “There’s no way in the world
this is the end of the activity because that’s up to the Russians,”
Senator Molan told the Nine network.
“(There’s) been threats made by the Russians, by the Iranians, they
are mixed up in the Syrian activity.” He expected Russian President
Vladimir Putin to counter, possibly with a cyber attack, and release
a lot of disinformation.
“The limited nature of what the Americans have done removes a lot of
options from him,” Senator Molan said.
Senator Wong said the opposition, like the Australian government,
disagreed with many of the actions taken by Russia.
“We continue to be critical of them, in a great many respects,
including in their actions in relation to Syria.” Mr Ciobo told the
ABC that Russia had a choice to make.
“Do they want to be alongside murderous regimes that use chemical
weapons against their own people?” he said.
“Or would they rather be aligned with those countries that are
motivated to protect the innocent and to try to bring a successful
peaceful resolution.” Overnight, the UN Security Council rejected a
Russian resolution calling for condemnation of the “aggression” by
the US and its allies against Syria. Russia got support from only two
other countries on the 15-member council — China and Bolivia.
megan.palin@news.com.au | @ https://twitter.com/Megan_Palin
Megan_Palin
http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/low-fuel-reserves-australias-43-day...
----- End forwarded message -----
