Patrick Durrant | Sydney
Analysts of the deepening problem of Australia’s fuel and energy security have been encouraged by the White Paper’s attempt to tackle the issue but say it will not go far enough and a whole of nation approach is required.
In stark contrast to the Energy White Paper released by the Abbott Government in April last year, the 2016 White Paper has gone much further than its predecessors towards recognising, for example, the threat posed to the fuel and energy supply chain by China’s aggressive posturing in the South China Sea.
Minister for Defence Senator Marise Payne, in response to questions in Parliament, said, “[Fuel security] is an aspect of the White Paper that has a lot of focus. It is an area of enabling capability within Defence that has been significantly underfunded in recent years and it’s one that the White Paper seeks to address.”
But the NRMA’s fuel security advisor and former Deputy Chief of Air Force Air Vice Marshal (retd.) John Blackburn said it’s not Defence’s role to tackle the broader issues of fuel security and the Minister needs to put more pressure on the Energy Minister to address it.
“There’s a huge gap right now emerging between the Energy White Paper of last year and the Defence White Paper of this year, which if not considered together result in stovepipe solutions and risk,” Blackburn said to ADM. “It’s not Defence’s problem alone. It is a whole of nation problem that the Energy Minister should be leading but his department does not tend to look at whole of system issues very well.“
"It addresses Defence’s internal fuel issues but it doesn’t address the resilience of the fuel supply chain."
Blackburn said the action’s Defence have put into the White Paper are “by and large remediation of their own infrastructure, which has fallen apart in recent years.”
He said it was good to see plans for delivering fuel to bases like RAAF Tindal via a rail extension “but if you don’t have rolling stock on the railways that can take fuel it won’t do them much good.”
“It addresses Defence’s internal fuel issues but it doesn’t address the resilience of the fuel supply chain,” Blackburn said.
Neil Greet, former army engineer, energy security analyst and co-author of Engineers Australia report Energy Security for Australia - Crafting a comprehensive energy security policy, said the White Paper was encouraging, particularly at the strategic level.
“If you look at past White Papers there is scant mention of energy security. In 1976 Australia was comfortable in it’s largely fuel self-reliant status and it wasn’t until 2009 that you see energy security emerging as a very non-traditional threat.”
The 2013 White Paper, according to Greet, shifted the regional focus on energy security to encompass the Middle East, arguing that Australia’s commitment to UN and US-led operations reflected our strategic interest in supporting Middle East stability and predictable energy security.
Greet feels the latest version may provide a better framework with which to address the problem.
“We can actually see it at a strategic level, now what do we do to actually enforce those words and turn them into something plausible and look at our supply chains in detail?”
Greet wanted to see the demand side of the fuel security equation addressed: “for instance how do we get some of our fuel reliant capabilities onto alternate fuel sources? This can be done with regard to vehicles and remote land bases – there’s no reason why Defence couldn’t be using electric vehicles in some form in the not too distant future”.
Greet and others, including Blackburn, were disappointed by the Energy White Paper of last year. He is hopeful that the forthcoming National Energy Security Assessment (NESA) will go some way towards addressing the growing concern of energy security, even though, as he said, “releasing the NESA after the Energy White Paper is like putting the horse behind the cart”.
“You should do the assessment and then write your policy to reflect it, not the other way round,” Greet told ADM.
Blackburn too is hoping for significant Defence influence in the next NESA. He said Defence might only represent a very small percentage of the national fuel demand during peacetime, “but in wartime, if it ramps up very rapidly, then we have two problems, we don’t have a government owned stockholding, and we’re totally reliant on the market to provide those fuels”.
“Unless they do Defence won’t get the supply guaranteed.”
He said the market analysis as demonstrated by the 2011 NESA does not look at a whole range of scenarios such as the South China Sea or failures in our domestic supply chain route.
“The Australian Institute of Petroleum said those types of defence scenarios are not appropriate for a NESA and it should look at market factors only.”
That, Blackburn said, is fundamentally wrong. Defence can only highlight what it needs.
“I hope eventually that the Energy Minister looks at the scenarios presented in the Defence White Paper, sees how Defence is taking this aspect seriously, and then gets his own department to take the broader issue of fuel security more seriously,” Blackburn said.
“Unless they do Defence won’t get the supply guaranteed.”
In response to a question from ADM, Minister Payne said she was "absolutely" committed to working with the Minister for Resources, Energy, and Northern Australia and others on a whole of nation approach to fuel security.
"It is at the forefront of our minds," she said.