‘Country could shut down’: Australia has just 28 days of petrol

Australia has less than one month’s worth of jet fuel, petrol and diesel in storage, and is the only country failing to meet its international treaty obligations to have enough oil in case of a global emergency.

The lack of fuel supplies has sparked warnings that Australia may quickly find it is unable to stock supermarket and pharmacy shelves or operate freight between states in the event of a severe global supply chain disruption.

Australia had oil stores equivalent to just 49 days’ worth of net imports as at July 2025, according to figures from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

The figure was close to the record low levels reached in 2017, and far beneath the 90-day requirement under a global treaty signed with the International Energy Agency in 1974 that now covers 32 countries. Australia has been non-compliant with the 90-day obligation since 2012.

Of the 27 members who are net oil importers like Australia, IEA data shows they had an average of 141 days of import coverage as at June 2025. The country with the second-lowest oil supplies after Australia was New Zealand, with 92 days of import coverage.

Based on normal consumption rates, DCCEEW estimated Australia had just 20 days of jet fuel, 24 days of diesel, and 28 days of petrol supplies in July. The data only includes stock on land and in domestic coastal waters.

Rex Patrick, a former independent senator and navy submariner, said Australians should be very concerned about the country’s lack of fuel supplies.

“The government, on a regular basis, is spelling out how the serious geostrategic circumstances that are developing in our region,” Patrick told The Australian Financial Review.

“The country could be shut down without any shot being fired on Australian soil.

“If people were worried about toilet paper during COVID, wait until they understand that there is no food arriving at the supermarket, and there’s no drugs arriving at the chemist because that’s the reality of what happens when diesel storage runs out.”

The Liquid Fuel Security Review in 2020 found that Australia could withstand a significant reduction in supply from the Middle East, but would be vulnerable to a major disruption in the North-East Asian supply chain.

Australia’s three largest suppliers of refined oil are Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

Tony Wood, a senior fellow at the Grattan Institute’s energy program, said Australia was particularly reliant upon diesel imports compared to similar economies due to the dominance of long-distance road freight.

Wood said Australia originally had little problem meeting the 90-day requirement when the IEA treaty began in the 1970s, at which time there were about a dozen oil refineries with large storage facilities. But the facilities have been progressively shut, and Australia now has just two refineries and is highly reliant on imported fuels.

“We are at the end of a long supply chain, and we sometimes get nervous about that,” Wood said.

Even though it is expressed in terms of local days of supply, the IEA treaty is actually an obligation for Australia to supply oil to the global market in the interest of market stability, which should then ensure domestic security.

The 90-day obligation allows the IEA to trigger a collective stock release in case of an emergency, and each country would make a proportional share of its oil reserve available to the market.

Patrick said most of Australia’s logistic supply chain for consumables came from truck transport, which relied on diesel. All that was needed was a supply chain disruption to cause a major issue, he said.

“We’ll happily spend $368 billion on a submarine capability that it’s questionable whether that will arrive, let alone anytime soon. And no one’s looking at the fuel security issue,” Patrick said.

Asked when Australia would comply with the treaty, a spokesman for Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australia was “fuel secure”.

“We are now holding more stocks of aviation fuel, petrol and diesel than at any time in the last 15 years,” he said, citing a separate measure of fuel supply known as the Minimum Stock Obligation (MSO).

The MSO, which was created in 2021, includes supply fuel stocks in pipelines and on water in Australia’s exclusive economic zone. The IEA excludes these supplies because the fuel is not readily accessible.

“These domestic fuel reserves guarantee a minimum buffer of around 4 to 5 weeks from a complete disruption of fuel supply – like the total isolation of Australia from global oil trade – and our stocks will last much longer for other disruptions,” the spokesman said.

Airbus Australia’s chief representative, Stephen Forshaw, in August warned that Australia was at risk of sleepwalking into a fuel security crisis.

Over the past decade, Australia has doubled its dependence on imported jet fuel to more than 7 billion litres, more than one quarter of which comes from Chinese refineries.

But Wood said he was not too worried about Australia’s failure to meet the 90-day obligation to the IEA.

“It’s not difficult to come up with catastrophic stories. The question is, how much are you prepared to pay what risks?” Wood said. “I think the reality is that we do have a reasonable amount of diversity. We can move fairly quickly. We have good relations with a number of major international suppliers.”

Extracted in full from:  https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/country-could-shut-down-australia-has-just-28-days-of-petrol-20251014-p5n2b9