In NSW 150 service stations were without diesel, 32 less than on Friday; in Victoria 51 had run out of diesel, down by 23; and in Queensland 49 were without diesel, down by seven since the start of the Easter break.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe total number of service stations without diesel in Australia, which is where the main pressure has been, is 312 out of the around 8000,\u201d Bowen told reporters in Sydney on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
He reiterated the Albanese government\u2019s call for families to stick to their Easter holiday plans but to buy no more fuel than they needed and to buy it in the city to help keep supplies up in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia\u2019s fuel supply remains strong still; more than 50 ships are on their way to Australia, still only six cancellations of forward orders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bowen said new orders had more than replaced the cancelled ones and fuel companies had told him they were very confident of the supply of 3.7 billion litres booked in for April and going into May.<\/p>\n
But Matt Barrie, executive chair of online freight marketplace Loadshift, said Bowen was \u201ccelebrating ships on the water\u201d bringing 3.7 billion litres when Australia burned through 4.5 billion litres a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis survival tip to drivers is to plan your route around fuel availability – which is basically conceding we have a crisis while pretending we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the government\u2019s proposed $1 billion fund to help affected businesses, dispersed through interest-free loans, Barrie said Loadshift had canvassed its 40,000 carriers and none of them wanted a loan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want the excise and GST on diesel gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to know why a country that exports more energy than almost anywhere on earth can\u2019t fuel its own trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury told reporters a positive was that the international benchmark price for unleaded petrol had stabilised.<\/p>\n
That and the cut in the fuel excise was being reflected at the bowser, with the average price in most capital cities for unleaded now in the low $2.20s, about a 20 to 30 cents a litre reduction.<\/p>\n
Australians could have confidence they could go on a road trip and there was going to be petrol and diesel for them, but they shouldn\u2019t buy more than they needed, Khoury said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want fuel sitting in your jerry can at home because that belongs in a truck or in a harvester,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bowen said the majority of imported fuel had come from Asian refineries but since the war in the Middle East, Australia had been sourcing from the US, Mexico and other countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good thing for diversifying supply.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was seeding and sowing season in NSW and that was why service station fuel outages had been higher in that state, the energy minister said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I do think, I hope, that we\u2019re seeing now the worst of that past,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly how this war will end. I\u2019m not sure anyone around the world does but the sooner it ends the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
– AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In NSW 150 service stations were without diesel, 32 less than on Friday; in Victoria 51 had run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-585320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585320","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=585320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}