A $4 million feasibility study. A $15 billion ‘fuel security’ package. And a refinery that, if built, won’t open until the 2030s — announced the same week the Iran war pushed oil prices soaring again.
A refinery study isn’t fuel security. It’s a 20th-century reflex to a 21st-century problem, and it looks a lot more like what fossil fuel lobbyists wanted than what Australia needs.
Most of the world has already made its choice. Asian manufacturers, especially China, are mass-producing electric vehicles and trucks fast enough to define the next global economy, and oil’s grip on land transport is breaking in real time.
The oil death spiral is well underway in the world’s largest car market (Figure 1). Australia is choosing, instead, to argue about how much crude to keep in tanks.
Figure 1. Share of new vehicle registrations in China by drivetrain. (Source: Raphael Wellman).
