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 -----