The fuel crisis has forced Bowen and company to release a stockpile of previously restricted “high sulphur fuel” to boost domestic supply and ease the fuel crisis.
This easing of Australia’s fuel standards will release an additional 100 million litres of fuel per month, which equates to about two days’ of extra supply, and will be in place for the next 60 days. The NRMA rejects the tag “dirty fuel” used for higher sulphur fuel, saying it’s not really dirty fuel in the sense that it’s going to hurt your engine. It’s simply one of the stupid Euro-style green excesses that ultimately lock out refining competitors to the main players like Shell and BP.
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has launched an urgent enforcement investigation into Australia’s four biggest fuel suppliers – Ampol, BP, Mobil, Viva Energy.
The complaint to the ACCC is that during the worst fuel crisis in decades these fuel suppliers are cutting off diesel supply to independent distributors servicing regional and rural Australia.
So while country towns are running dry and farmers are watching their machinery sit idle, the companies controlling 85 percent of Australia’s fuel supply are allegedly making sure their own branded stations got stocked first.
Whether or not the ACCC can properly and effectively address this issue is in question, as the ACCC is notoriously feeble when dealing with big business, however transport industry observers say the ACCC going public at the start of an active investigation is almost unheard of.
“When the watchdog breaks protocol you know the problem is bigger than the press releases are letting on,” a transport industry statement said..
Viva Energy may not be familiar to many readers. It is the company behind Shell distributors and owns one of only two refineries in Australia, their one being located in Geelong, Victoria, which began operations in 1954 and today employs more than 1100 people and supplies more than 50 percent of Victoria’s and 10 percent of Australia’s fuel.
The refinery can process up to 120,000 barrels of oil per day, manufacturing petrol, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, avgas and low aromatic fuel to reduce the petrol-sniffing problem in remote Aboriginal communities.
Meanwhile the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) is calling on the government to activate disaster recovery funding immediately, temporarily scrap the road user charge, and update owner driver cost orders to reflect what fuel actually costs right now, Australian Road Train Life reports.
They also want the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and state governments to issue urgent notices allowing greater use of high productivity freight vehicles on major freight routes, giving operators a way to move more freight per trip and offset some of the cost pain.
On the industry side the ATA will give members ready-to-use materials to switch to monthly tax statements and to explain to customers why fuel levies and freight rates need to go up.
“The core message is simple: operators are bleeding and they need relief now, not after another round of reviews and hearings,” says the ATA. “Whether the government actually moves on any of this is another story.”
ATA’s cynicism is not unfounded as Albanese and his Canberra mob are largely divorced from economic reality, pushing “progressive” agendas like “climate action”, which infers that fossil fuels but be eventually banned in order to “save the planet”.
What Albanese and company and their Green wing don’t understand is that so-called fossil fuels are literally the lifeblood of any modern economy, but what they do understand is that the petrol bowser is a guaranteed revenue source to pay the interest on their borrowing for big spending programs.
Cairns News has already reported Federal MP Kennedy Bob Katter and independent MPs from across Australia are demanding urgent implementation of self-sufficient national fuel solutions, including a structural transition to biofuels by securing the domestic supply of renewable ethanol-blended petrol and biodiesel.
They also called on the Albanese government to empower the Treasurer to control fuel prices instead of simply ‘monitoring’ price-gouging and to immediately suspending the outrageous 52c-a-litre fuel excise tax at the bowsers.
Neglected refining capabilities and strengthening liquid fuel reserves should also be restored.
