Molan issues warning over Australia’s fuel reserves

Liberal Senator Jim Molan says there needs to be “action” on our low fuel reserves in the wake of the joint Syrian airstrikes.

Senator Molan says Australia is in “real trouble” over its fuel supply.

Liberal Senator Jim Molan has said there needs to be “action” on Australia’s low fuel reserves in the wake of the joint Syrian airstrikes.

After the US, the UK and France carried out airstrikes in Syria on the weekend, Donald Trump warned that America remains “locked and loaded’’ to launch another missile strike pushing oil prices to their highest since late 2014.

Last week Retired air vice-marshal John Blackburn, a former deputy chief of the air force told The Australian that there was a risk the conflict could undermine Australia’s energy security, which he said was dependent on regional refineries and oil flows from the Middle East.

In particular he highlighted Australia’s low fuel reserves. While the International Energy Agency mandates that countries hold a stock in reserve “equivalent to 90 days of net imports”, Australia has just 43 days of supply.

Senator Molan, a former major general in the Australian Army said Australia is in “real trouble”.

“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 told 2GB.

He said the government had taken a “business as usual approach” and he had spoken to his Liberal colleagues about the issue and now was the time to “see action”.

“It happens because for too long we have taken a business as usual approach. 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.”

While the Australian military was not involved in Saturday’s strike, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday his government was in constant contact with the US about any future role.

Labor Defence Spokesman Richard Marles has said there is “unlikely” to be an Australian military role in any future American-led action to further punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons.

Mr Marles also said there was unlikely to be a request from Washington for any Australian military resources to assist American forces.

“It’s not obvious to me what that [role] will be at the moment so I don’t think such a request is likely.”

He said, however, from his point of view Canberra should be open to any “practical” request.

“But we do support the stance that the international community has taken and necessarily what that means if you think Australia should play its part in the world is that if there is some sort of sensible and practical request on Australia in the future you’d want to look at that.”

While Australian super hornets and Air Task Group members returned to Australia this year, a KC-30 tanker and Wedgetail surveillance aircraft remain deployed.