Holy smokes.
If this doesn’t go hand in glove with what I posted about yesterday, there is no such thing as ‘consequences for actions/inaction.’
To quickly refresh your memory on a busy news day, my headline read:
Nut Zeroes: Kiwis Are Up a Creek in 3 Weeks and Nearly No Diesel in the Land Down Under
And my story featured panicked videos of Australian motorists looking for fuel for their cars, reports of fishing fleets being left at the dock for lack of diesel for their motors, news reports of empty gas stations across Western Australia, and a two week old report from the Daily Mail about politicians being told to keep their yaps shut about the desperate nationwide fuel situation lest they trigger panic buying.
Australian politicians were told by party leaders to keep their mouths shut about the country’s dwindling fuel supplies, a top defence analyst has claimed.
Concerns over Australia’s fuel security have surged since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, with fears regional petrol stations could run out of E10 and unleaded within days.
The war effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz – the gateway for about 20 per cent of global gas and oil shipping – leaving tankers idle for more than a week and forcing producers to halt pumping while storage cleared.
Saudi Arabia‘s national oil company Aramco temporarily halted operations at its Ras Tanura refinery on the coast after it was hit by a drone.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen attempted to extinguish fears this week amid reports people had started to hoard petrol in jerry cans.
‘Supply of diesel and petrol continues to arrive in Australia as expected and our backup reserves remain in place,‘ he said on Wednesday.
‘This international crisis is creating uncertainty right around the world. But Australia is well prepared, with our strategic reserve held under our government in Australia, not in Texas like it was under Angus Taylor.’
But former Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Air Force, John Blackburn, has claimed politicians were dissuaded from talking about Australia’s fuel supply.
The fuel shortages are ongoing, and rationing is now on the table.
Don’t worry Aussies, although fuel is in tight supply your top official have assured me that the flow of migrants wont slow down at all. Your government remains dedicated to focusing all it’s effort on importing your most important resource.
— Richard Seymore (@Roll_69d420) March 21, 2026
An absolutely hilarious – considering the situation, of course – TikTok was uploaded today.
It features a lad on a horse, gamboling up to a Shell station packed with folks hoping for some petrol, and he’s serenading the drivers as he walks by.
I DON’T NEED PETROL
I’M ON A HORSE
HE RUNS ON CARROTS
HE RUNS ON CAAA-RRROTS
This has made my day.🤣🤣🤣
Man on horse sings to people in cars queueing for petrol.🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/whYwFISHcl
— Patriotic 🇬🇧 Nation (@HoodedClaw1974) March 26, 2026
One curmudgeon in the comments notes it won’t be funny when he runs out of carrots.
In any event, a terrifying prospect, no?
And thanks for it all to net-zero and green policies that have driven oil production into decline and almost all of Australia’s homegrown oil refinery capabilities offshore. They export 80% of their oil because they can only refine 20% of it at home.
At the turn of this century, Australia produced 563,000 barrels of oil a day, with eight refineries supplying 98% of our total petroleum product needs.
From that high point, oil and petroleum production has slumped to the point where the country relies on imports for 90% of its liquid fuel needs and oil production is at its lowest since the late 1960s.
Over the past 25 years, the number of local refineries has also dropped:
Mobil’s Port Stanvac refinery in South Australia was mothballed in 2003 (and permanently closed in 2009).
Shell’s Clyde refinery was closed in November 2013.
Caltex closed its Kurnell refinery in Sydney in October 2014.
BP did the same with its Brisbane plant in mid-2015.
BP then closed its Kwinana refinery south of Fremantle in March 2021.
ExxonMobil’s Altona refinery in Melbourne was shuttered in August of the same year.
That has left just Ampol’s Lytton refinery in Brisbane and Viva Energy’s facility in Geelong – both of which depend on government support to stay open.
Where does the fuel now come from?
Various refined products from Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and China, and do take note of that last sentence – it’s just become hugely important.
…Digging a little deeper, last year we sourced 55% of our petrol imports from Singapore, and nearly 30% of our diesel from South Korea.
And while China supplies only 7% of our refined petroleum product imports, it is a hugely important supplier of jet fuel, accounting for a third of our international purchases last year.
Especially in light of where the government reserves stood as of the 17th, which was over a week ago.
…As at 17 March (the latest figures as at time of writing), these reserves were equivalent to:
Is this enough? Again, it all depends how long the strait of Hormuz remains closed.
China cut off Australia’s deliveries of Jet A1 today.
UH-OH
BREAKING: The walls are quickly closing in. Chinese authorities have just cut off supplies of jet fuel to Australia
32% of our aviation fuel comes from China, and Singapore has also reduced supply
Watch the government blame everyone but themselves https://t.co/RrYKITzWsO
— Lisa (@Lisa9Sophia) March 13, 2026
IS IT OKAY TO PANIC YET?
China is quietly throttling its exports of jet fuel, diesel, and fertilisers, sparking significant supply fears across major resource, manufacturing, and agricultural nations in Asia.
Driven by the ongoing war in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, China‘s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) recently instructed producers to halt overseas shipments to protect domestic energy and food reserves.
Unlike previous, highly publicized export controls used during the U.S.–China trade war, Beijing has not made an official announcement regarding these new restrictions, a move analysts attribute to the sudden urgency of the supply crisis.
…Australia is also highly exposed, relying on China for a third of its jet fuel and significant amounts of diesel, which threatens the nation’s food distribution networks, domestic air travel, and rural mining operations.
The Australian government recently convened a special cabinet meeting to address the cascading effects of the shortages, warning of a “very real” potential surge in inflation that could severely damage the country’s GDP.
Industry experts anticipate it is highly unlikely China will grant export waivers until navigation through the Strait of Hormuz substantially resumes and domestic inventories are fully replenished.
The Chinese retrenchment is affecting Vietnam, India, and other trading partners as well, but Australia is in a particular pickle thanks to its green energy strategy and hostility to fossil fuels, the very fossil fuels it looks like it needs pretty badly for everyday life.
Oh. And big island in the middle of nowhere doesn’t help a lick, either.
Neither does the fact that successive Australian governments have never once maintained fuel reserves at the level needed in case this very thing happened, even as they marched into a climate cult Kool-Aid event.
…And it’s worth pointing out that the International Energy Agency (IEA) requires all member countries which are net importers of oil and oil products (including Australia) to maintain reserves equivalent to at least 90 days of imports.
We’ve never fulfilled that requirement, and in fact have the lowest reserves by this measure among all IEA countries.
This news hit like a thunderbolt only 24 hours after the director of the airport in Sydney said (‘claimed’ was the verbiage used) the country was too reliant on imported fuels.
Oh. Do tell.
…The news comes 24 hours after Sydney Airport chief executive Scott Charlton claimed Australia was too reliant on overseas supplies, News Corp reported.
‘(This) means the reliability of that 25-day supply depends on international shipping lanes, global refining capacity and geopolitical stability,’ he told a conference.
The man’s looking like Nostrodamus now, even as he hedged his statement with emissions cult claptrap, but any rational, non-unicorn-rainbow-fart-blinded person could have told them the exact thing years ago.
And now where are they?
Praying that the ONE tanker still in the middle of the normal twenty-five-day transit to the country doesn’t have an accident on the way, or get diverted to more lucrative shores for someone willing to pay twice as much.
There’s no stifling the press now – the dire warnings are flying.
China move could doom Aussie flights as jet fuel shipments drop to zero
Australia’s biggest jet fuel supplier appears to have cut us off, with no new shipments scheduled for next month in a move that could trigger flight chaos.
Australia’s biggest jet fuel supplier appears to have cut us off, with no shipments scheduled for next month as Aussies are slapped with cancelled flights and higher ticket prices.
The nation sources jet fuel from a range of Asian countries, but China provides the bulk of the kerosene imported to our shores.
In March, we imported 12 shipments of jet fuel totalling almost 2 million barrels.
Most of it (almost 700,000 barrels) came from China, with the next-largest shipments arriving from South Korea and Singapore.
But there are no shipments from China scheduled for April, after Beijing banned fuel exports in response to the oil shock emanating from the war in the Middle East.
In fact, there is only a single jet fuel shipment scheduled.
It’s carrying 588,000 barrels from South Korea and due to reach Sydney on April 7, according to shipping data from London Stock Exchange Group, provided by Macquarie University senior lecturer Lurion De Mello.
One. Tanker.
For the whole country.
HOLY CRAP
Jet fuel prices are already up over 150%, airlines are raising prices while cutting back flights, and playing the scheduling by ear.
…As the flow of jet fuel to Australia is reduced to a trickle, Keith Tonkin from Aviation Projects told news.com.au that while going on holidays and heading overseas will still be part of our lives, it may look quite different for the foreseeable future.
“Right now, Australian international flights are looking a week ahead and working it out as they go,” he explained.
“It’s just a matter of keeping an eye on things and having a plan.
…Jetstar on Tuesday cut more than 55 trans-Tasman flights, including routes from Auckland and Sydney and from Sydney to Queenstown, citing a rise in the cost of jet fuel.
Qantas said it was raising fares this week in response to jet fuel prices rising up to 150 per cent over the past fortnight.
Virgin Australia also confirmed it was hiking ticket prices.
What a pity they can’t use a solar cell like a magic carpet or turbine blades for a wind-driven propeller.
Dang.
Since they weren’t listening to anyone warning them all these years, someone should have thought of that. You know.
‘Just in case.‘
Because ‘in case’ is here, and they don’t even have a paddle for this creek, let alone a boat.
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