Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This information may shock, but Australian fuel petroleum reserves stand at just 23 days. Furthermore, Australia is almost totally dependent on Singapore refineries for our fuel supplies. In September I attended the 'Pilbara Pulse' conference in Karratha, where Julian Cribb spoke on the implications of this and offered a solution to our dependency on imported petroleum products. Disturbingly, he described oil and Australia's reliance on it as 'Australia's Fukushima'.

Just 15 per cent of Australia's oil is sourced locally and the outlook is bleak, with two refineries set to close by 2015, meaning that that percentage for domestically sourced petroleum will only fall. Australians pay other fuel-rich countries some $40 billion a year for imported fuel for the privilege of driving our cars, taking public transport and running our industries. According to Julian Cribb, our national fuel reserves stand at just 23 days—that is, we have barely three weeks supply of fuel in reserve to power this nation. Were the regular supplies of petrol delivered by tankers from Singapore on a daily basis to our ports to cease, the impact on the Australian economy would be catastrophic. In a very short time, all transport would come to a halt and vital commodities could not be delivered. Industry would similarly grind to a halt.

Just as worrying is the apparent lack of any contingency plan or strategy to deal with what would constitute a national emergency; indeed, it would be a catastrophic national emergency. An NRMA-Kokoda Foundation report released earlier this year estimates that the nation's chilled food supply would last just one week and dry goods only another two days. According to Cribb's presentation in Karratha, the farming and mining sectors of our economy are 100 per cent dependent on petroleum products. Were that supply to dry up, those sectors would grind to a halt. On average, the delivery of food to Australia's supermarkets, delis and corner stores requires upwards of 80,000 truck trips each week, all dependent on petroleum fuel.

It is frightening that, as I am advised, in Australia there exists no national food reserve, nor a national strategic oil reserve to literally keep the country going were imported oil not to be available. However, fascinatingly, according to the presentation made by Julian Cribb in Karratha, Australia's dependence on foreign oil refineries and clear sea lanes to deliver that fuel to Australia can be easily rectified by the use of algae generated fuels. According to Cribb, all of Australia's liquid transport fuels could be produced from the area of one large sheep station, approximately 600,000 hectares in total, using algae-generated production of oil. For example, he quoted yields of petroleum from agricultural products—in US gallons per acre—as ranging from 18 gallons per acre for corn, to 635 for palm oil, to 5,000 to 15,000 from micro-algae, and that is 57 to 165 tonnes of oil per hectare.

The use of algal biofuels is already part of working projects for a number of big global organisations where oil is a key component to their operational viability. Cribb stated that the US navy and the US air force are two big users of algal biofuels and that Lufthansa, Virgin Airlines, Air New Zealand, Japan Air Lines, Air China, Etihad and the Boeing company all have a strong interest in algal biofuels. In Australia, the universities of Wollongong, Queensland, Adelaide, Murdoch, Flinders and James Cook, as well as the CSIRO, are researching the use of algae as an alternative fuel source.

A common question asked is how much land would be required to grow algae as an alternative source of fuel for our national needs. A 2011 report found that 'if algae derived biodiesel was to replace the annual global production of 1.1 billion tonnes of conventional diesel then a landmass of 57.3 million hectares would be required'. While 57.3 million hectares sounds huge, to put it in perspective, the Pilbara region of Western Australia alone is some 502 million hectares in size. The required land space would fit into the Pilbara almost nine times over.

By 2040, algae could be part of a $50 billion farm industry supplying all of Australia's liquid fuels, plus health food, stockfeed, plastics, textiles, chemicals, seafood and paper. The advantages are as significant as the idea is revolutionary for Australia's economy. Firstly, the use of algae fuels would eliminate the biggest threat to our national security, which is our dependence on imported petroleum products, and would instead permanently guarantee our fuel reserves. Most importantly, it would exploit one of Australia's greatest natural sources of renewable energy, the sun, to create usable liquid fuel for our national requirements.

Obviously, since this presentation was made in the Pilbara, where there is very considerable experience in producing industrial salt for export to Asia and other places by evaporating sea water in large ponds, and the evaporation rate in the Pilbara is three metres per annum, then the Pilbara and the north of WA in general would be an ideal location for the ponds required to grow algae for fuel production on a large scale. But there are many other areas across Australia, particularly in the North where temperatures are high and rainfall low, that could be considered as potential areas where algal fuel production could be established as well.

In conclusion, the fact that Australia only has 23 days worth of petrol in reserves and is almost totally dependent on petrol refined in Singapore and shipped to Australia must surely be regarded as the Achilles heel of our national security. Now that algae based fuel appears to be a feasible alternative to imported petroleum, it is surely in the national interest for its development to be further investigated. I hope that the Australian government proceeds rapidly to evaluate our capacity to produce fuel from algae in the near future.

Senate adjourned at 19:30