I think that this whole situation will become much worse. Lack of fuel means farmers cant produce, nothing will be transported by road. Airlines will cancel flights. Cost of everything will go through the roof. Not being pessimistic just realistic. There is no positive side to this. There is no way I would be setting out in a long trip. Getting cancer follow ups in Newcastle and Port Macquarie will be painful.

That is exactly the point. All transport within a city can be done by EV. Probably reduces ICE wastage by 75%.

A mate told me today his son-in-law, a bush transport operator paid $2,000 more for his tanks to be replenished yesterday.
4,000 litres.

Guess what happens when he invoices next week.
The cost has to be passed on, small business cannot absorb these high inflationary prices.
Invoice the customer for the increase, or go broke.

I was talking to another transport operator this morning.
They said they are getting rid of their only employee.
When the govt changes to implement on 1 July, 2026 the weekly superannuation remittances weekly now for weekly pay instead of remitting to the super fund every three months.
They said they don't have the time or inclination or cash flow to waste time every week remitting super.
So their solution is to avoid all the red tape and simply get rid of the problem - sack the driver and do without.

One sits down and simply ponders the idiocy of our political leaders at all levels, on all sides of politics now?
Blind Freddie would have seen this fuel crisis looming for months.
Why wasn't anything put in place prior to the Iran crisis.
If "the person in the street" can see these things coming, why can't those in control (or lack thereof).

Nothing was/is put in place by ALL our politicians because they can't think past what they thought yesterday. Thinking today is to much for them. Thinking for tomorrow would only put them into a coma.

Just to chuck a cat amongst the pigeons, without diesel to dig the coal and transport the coal to the power stations to produce electricity how do you city dwellers plan on keeping the electric trucks charged. The old slogan "without trucks Australia stops" comes to mind without diesel the trucks that keep the country going stop.

fatty wrote:

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Just to chuck a cat amongst the pigeons, without diesel to dig the coal and transport the coal to the power stations to produce electricity how do you city dwellers plan on keeping the electric trucks charged. The old slogan "without trucks Australia stops" comes to mind without diesel the trucks that keep the country going stop.

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 How do we mine all the important things like gold.

This will stuff up everyones' superannuation. 

Fridge can easily run off solar. All of us pretty much do that, & the lights, charge phones, camera, TV etc. Some of us run the air conditioning & induction cooking. 

There are some electric vehicle charging stations in rural areas run by diesel generators.......

Came across this from an Australian fuel industry insider. Hes in wholesale not retail. 1. Australian fuel is 90% imported these days, mainly from Asia. The Asia refiners are more competitive and have economies of scale that compete Australian refineries, thats why most of our have closed. Australia for over a decade has not met the internationally agreed 90-day buffer of fuel reserves in the country, we sit a roughly 32 days of stock. This is the fault of both Labor and Liberal governments in the past. Note: its easy to store crude oil but much more difficult to store refined products like diesel and petrol, they are flammable and go off after roughly a month or two of sitting in a tank. It is very expensive to build brand new storage tanks, which is why no commercial personal is doing it - this is why we import so much oil throughput. 2. Not all crude oils are the same. The Asian refineries are set up to refine medium sour crude (far more experienced chemical engineers, or Google, can give you more info of the API and Gravity ranges of crude oil types). This is mainly produced by the Middle East. It is very hard to replace this crude oil into the refineries at short notice. So it doesnt matter how many barrels the US releases from its crude stock piles as that is a light sweet crude (and is prohibitively expensive on the ocean freight component). Asian refiners have been cancelling contracts and governments like Thailand and China are banning diesel and petrol exports to keep these critical fuels in their own countries. Therefore, it has gotten very expensive to source alternative cargos to supply Australia (something called the MOPS Premia has skyrocketed. So has backwardation). The best analysis I am reading is a soon as the Middle East waterway (Strait of Hormuz) opens up, it will still be 1.5 to 2 months before the Asian refiners are running at full capacity again. Note you cant just shut down a refinery, these things are designed to run 24/7. Shutting down completely puts equipment at serious risk of damage, therefore refiners are choosing to run at say 50% capacity to delay to running out of crude oil feedstock and not damage refinery equipment. 3. While Brent crude has gone from say 70 to 100 USD/barrel (ie roughly 40%), refined products like diesel, petrol and jet fuel, have spiked far higher relatively speaking. This mainly comes down to the regional supply and demand issues being experienced in Asia. Note Australian fuel is roughly priced as Singapore fuel + ocean freight + local costs. Therefore you cant just take the increase in Brent crude (main type of crude oil) and assume thats the increase in cost to the fuel that you buy. Diesel seems to be facing far worse supply constraints compared to petrol aka gasoline (and jet fuel even worse than that). I'll link a great article at the end on why jet fuel is spiking so much more (it's a free article on substack) 4. Regional Australia wholesale diesel All the oil majors (Mobil, BP, Ampol etc) are understandably holding onto their own product to keep supplying their own retail stations (this was the case last week at least). They stopped selling in the wholesale market. The oil majors years ago largely exited regional Australia and delivery services to farms etc. Independent wholesale business filled in this gap. They do not import their own fuel, but rather buy on the wholesale spot market (where I sell to them), and therefore usually have no term supply guarantees from BP, Ampol etc. Given regional Australia still runs on diesel fuel for all farming, food transportation etc, this is why you hear regional Australia having a fuel crisis more than the cities. This is why I believe that the electrification of key transportation supply chains is critical for Australias future. So for Chris Bowen, our Energy Minister, saying he is working with the majors to secure more diesel that is dedicated/prioritised for regional communities, I have no idea how the government are practically going to pull that off (price caps? Allocated volume with some sort of government mandated fixed price? Who knows how it'll work, but it sounds nice in a speech). 5. Conclusion/generic thoughts This situation isn't resolving itself anytime soon unfortunately. There is a saying commodity trading - high prices cure high prices and low prices cure low prices. When the price sky rockets, demand drops off where possible or supply is increased. When theres super low prices, supply reduces as said suppliers cant stay in business selling at those low prices. In this current high prices situation, supply cant increase right now, so the only lever is to reduce demand. If the price is kept low by governments, demand would stay around, you would have no more supply coming into Australia, and you would eventually run out of fuel. Neither is a good situation, but running out of fuel entirely is probably worse than having some fuel at a high price, which theoretically destroys some flexible demand. Looks like were in sh1tters ditch for a few months.

Sorry, but I don't find that wall of text readable. I pasted it into AI and asked to convert it into something more readable (paragraphs). Maybe separate posts would help.

Back to fuel and adding to that .....

The announcement to reduce our MSO obligations of 32 days' storage is focused on regional Australia. The fuel companies can only drop below the 32 days (to ~ 25 days) if it is supplied to regional Australia (not sure how the mechanics of this work).

In the meantime, South Korea is a major supplier or ours. South Korea has an MSO of 200 days, vs our 32 (or 25 now). The Korean fuel companies had been seeking to dip into that minimum holding, but the government disallowed that. Instead they put a cap on the wholesale price of fuel (what goes to their service stations). That meant that as prices of crude continued to rise, the fuel companies would soon be supplying wholesale at a loss. So they immediately stopped any new export contracts. We can no longer place a fresh order from South Korea if we run too low.

Existing export contracts are still being fulfilled but the government has the power to cancel them without penalty if the situation worsens, and have threatened that action.

In the meantime, China did just that 2-3 weeks ago, starting before the war began. No announcement. The first indication was not accepting any new contracts, then cancellation of existing orders. We had two tankers with mainly diesel on the way .... cancelled before loading.

On the positive side, Singapore, our largest supplier is still supplying, although getting tighter. There is a bunker fuel shortage there (what the ships run on). Currently almost a 2 week delay and growing. Next, two tankers from India (mainly diesel) bound for Europe were turned around mid ocean and are on their way to the Asian market for the higher prices. Only a small amount but it helps by taking a little pressure off. India is still taking orders, so maybe we could get some more there.

There are two tankers just starting loading in Texas for supply to Australia, the first ever from there. Long distance means late April arrival if they are not delayed at Panama. Probably less than a days' usage between them and delivery price will add at least 20c per litre at the pump.

I think things are going to get quite a bit worse in the next month or so before the market settles.

-- Edited by Are We Lost on Saturday 14th of March 2026 07:51:57 PM

Are we Lost, thanks for your valuable and factual content.

On Insiders on the ABC this morning the panelists attacked the farming community for stockpiling fuel.
I didn't know that they were the only ones doing so?

I think there is a need for some form of rationing, make sure there is enough fuel getting out to regional areas.
Also maybe all of those North Shore mums in their 4WD monsters might have to put the kiddies on a bus to school for a change.
Or maybe ride the treadlies to school for a change like I had to do from one end of town to the other from about age 8 onwards.

There is also the consideration of all of those Grey Nomads out in regional areas also needing a reliable fuel supply.
It is not just the truckies and farmers in need of fuel in regional areas.

Mentioned to a mate this morning just how vulnerable we are in Australia.
If an enemy of the state wanted to cripple us in five minutes.
They only need to drop a small drone on each of our two oil refineries and it is all over red rover.

No food on supermarket shelves, no livestock to market, MILLIONS of jobs lost.
Mining, transport, rail, cropping, mail, everything would cease virtually overnight.

This country needs contingencies and significant strategic planning.
The problem is, who is going to do that?

Certainly not any of them from all sides of the fence look capable of doing so?

rmoor wrote:

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They only need to drop a small drone on each of our two oil refineries and it is all over red rover.

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That would be a really nasty situation but more drones would be needed for a death blow. The refineries only produce about 10% of our fuel. While large storage facities are located at those sites, every state and territory has storage facilities. There are over 20 in Australia. Some are well inland, like Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs and several others. 

Back to the shortages ....

Those storage facilities are all included in the MSO storage calculation. There is no dedicated strategic storage facility as suggested earlier. Our MSO calculation includes ships at sea (if in Australian waters), trains and road tankers en route to other storage facilties. In essence, any fuel that has arrived in Australia but not yet shipped is counted. If it is under contract to be wholesaled, it is still counted until it leaves the fuel company depot.

Our large miners have their own storage reserves but probably only enough to continue operating for a couple of weeks. For MSO purposes, that fuel has already been wholesaled and left the fuel company depot, so is therefore not included in our official reserves. 

In the event of further conservation steps being needed, there is an agreed priority. Essential services top the list, then public transport and taxis. Then contracted supplies (which the mines would have), then the rest. The government has the power to look at individual mining operations and to grant them higher priority if needed. They also have the power to cancel contracts if needed.

As a diesel vehicle owner, I am troubled that all those essential services will be taking priority (not saying that is a bad decision, just a fact). Thus in severe shortages, private diesel vehicles will be facing restrictions before petrol vehicles.

-- Edited by Are We Lost on Sunday 15th of March 2026 01:06:07 PM

Last year, South Australia's renewable energy was 74% of consumption and it is expected to be 100% in 2027.
As the surplus of renewable energy increases, other forms of energy get converted to electricity because the marginal cost of renewable energy that is available is zero, and there will be more available tomorrow.
Cheers,
Peter

Yes, there is a conflict.
I am comfortable in that our fossil fuel energy use when travelling is lower than most people's use when they are at home or travelling and we supply between 20 and 30Kwh of clean renewable energy (at virtually no charge) to the grid every day whether home or travelling.

As far as fuel consumption is concerned, we use less litres/100km than most caravanners.
Last year we had 2 trips away, including 10 weeks in WA. We are travelling slower and less. We did less than 10,000km total last year. Every little bit helps.
We use virtually zero grid power at home and zero gas and have been this way for over 10 years.
The current vehicle uses 1kg of gas per month for cooking, that is all. The new build will have solar electric cooking. Neither have any 'plug-in' power capability.
We can all do a little better.
Cheers,
Peter