{"id":564802,"date":"2026-03-26T03:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564802\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T03:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:52:12","slug":"australia-to-experience-severe-diesel-shortage-by-mid-april-if-consumption-continues-at-current-rate-energy-expert-aidan-morrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564802\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia to experience ‘severe’ diesel shortage by mid-April if consumption continues at current rate: Energy expert Aidan Morrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia could be close to running out of diesel by mid-April\u00a0at the current rate of consumption, an energy expert has\u00a0projected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hundreds of service stations are out of at least one kind of fuel each day as the war in the Middle East continues.<\/p>\n

The nation’s primary producers and transport workers have been the hardest hit.<\/p>\n

The government has acted to investigate the fuel companies and installed a national fuel czar, but some crossbench and Opposition MPs have called for further action including rationing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Centre for Independent Studies director of energy research Aidan Morrison told Sky News that Australia could suffer a dire diesel shortage in a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time we get to … another month or so, mid-April, something like that, at the current rate, we\u2019re going to be seeing a very severe shortage indeed,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause\u00a0I think some people\u00a0are\u00a0anticipating\u00a0that shortage and buying more,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0seeing supply chains seize up and people not being able to get calls back from their distributors, not being able to\u00a0actually get\u00a0a delivery on the date they scheduled it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u00a0claimed\u00a0Australia would have an issue with diesel supply \u201cmuch, much sooner\u201d than petrol.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0because our country\u00a0actually uses\u00a0twice as much diesel as we do petrol, a little more than twice as much,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia is overwhelmingly a very heavy diesel-demanding country. We\u2019ve got huge agriculture, mining sector, (and) long, distributed freight routes for trucking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur refineries produce\u00a0roughly the\u00a0same\u00a0of\u00a0each, in fact, slightly more petrol.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Morrison said he had been surprised by how soon Australian service stations began running out of petrol following the outbreak of war in Iran.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the things that I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0anticipate, when\u00a0I thought there was\u00a030 days\u00a0or so of fuel in the country, I thought it would take us at least a couple of weeks before people\u00a0actually\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0get their fuel delivered,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut within about a week,\u00a0immediately\u00a0we\u2019re hearing\u00a0from farmers in the country that had placed orders and not had them delivered.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems that a month\u2019s supply\u00a0does not actually give many people in the supply chain the assurance they need to be able to keep on delivering fuel to all the places and not (hold) it up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He took the recent developments to signal Australia had to consider producing more of its own fuel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government has to look at using our own resources for that, otherwise we just don\u2019t have a serious solution for this,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Australia\u2019s case, we do have some oil,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0more that could be exported and drilled for.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, he said diesel would again be an issue for Australian refineries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of Australia\u2019s oil reserves, crude oil reserves are\u00a0very light, light crude oil and even condensate and\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0pretty good\u00a0for petrol,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not great for diesel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u2018They<\/p>\n

It comes as the Prime Minister announced he would\u00a0convene\u00a0a second National Cabinet meeting\u00a0to address fuel issues related to the Iran war.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Barnaby Joyce\u00a0urged the\u00a0federal and state\u00a0governments\u00a0to consider rationing to get ahead of what\u00a0he\u00a0saw as\u00a0an inevitable\u00a0\u201cpanic\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chris Bowen and his colleagues have repeatedly argued Australia does not have a supply issue, with Mr Bowen telling Sky News on Wednesday there was the same amount of fuel in the country now as at the beginning of the Iran war.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Australian consumers have still\u00a0been slugged at the bowser in past weeks with petrol\u00a0more than\u00a0250 cents per litre in Australian capitals on Thursday, and diesel\u00a0remaining\u00a0at more than 300\u00a0cents per litre.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hundreds of individual service stations have suffered outages at different points since the beginning of the crisis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Senator James Paterson on Thursday said if the government\u2019s claims about supply were true,\u00a0rationing should not be a consideration for the National Cabinet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRationing should be completely unnecessary, whether it\u2019s soft or hard rationing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that fuel is not getting to where it needs to go, and that is a supply problem, and one that Chris Bowen can fix.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has extraordinary powers under the Fuel Security Act… he should use them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia could be close to running out of diesel by mid-April\u00a0at the current rate of consumption, an energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2324,64,63,99,5865,28486,5517,164,1788,5520,6091,25976],"class_list":["post-564802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-car","tag-chris-bowen","tag-diesel","tag-economy","tag-labor","tag-petrol","tag-power","tag-truck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}