A threat from within !

The news that BP will close it's Bulwer Island oil refinery in Brisbane next year is another nail in the coffin of Australia's ability to refine the oil we produce here into the petrol and diesel that keeps our transport systems rolling.   Jobs will shrink from the present 380 to about 25 as the terminal is converted into a storage and delivery centre for overseas refined oil products.

This BP closure follows the loss of ExxonMobil's closure of it's Port Stanvac facility in South Australia in 2003 and our own Caltex refinery in Kurnell in 2012.    We are reduced to just three Australian based oil refineries - BP's Kwinana in Western Australia,  Shell's Geelong refinery in Victoria and the ExxonMobil Altona plant, also in Victoria.

The writing is on the wall that our future seems certain to be reliant on overseas refineries for all our petroleum products.  There is no doubt that the huge refineries in low wage countries can refine oil more cheaply than the smaller capacity units here in Australia, but these steady closures leave us vulnerable to commercial disaster - and to the neutering of our defence forces.   Every aspect of our defence system relies on fuel.

On average, petrol stocks in the service station network averages about a week's supply.   We can only guess how many more weeks are stored in the distribution centres,  but in the event that the tankers bringing fuel to this country were disrupted - we would quickly grind to a halt.

We live in an uneasy world, and there are tensions to our north over islands in the South China sea.  In the event of a clash between the Chinese and American navies it would be easy to envisage an interruption to sea traffic and even in peacetime having an essential service in the hands of another country can lead to a form of backmail - as events between Ukraine and Russia with gas supplies has illustrated.

We allow the diminishing number of oil refineries to continue at our peril.   Perhaps it may lead to us paying a few cents more for each litre of petrol to keep refining oil in Australia, but that would be a small price for retaining our ability to keep this nation's commercial and defence networks running in a time of crisis.