Australians would face higher fuel costs in the long term if the nation purchased more fuel tankers to prepare for a \u201cone-in-50-year\u201d oil crisis, an expert has warned.<\/p>\n
Demand for fuel skyrocketed when Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz – with regional Australia suffering intense shortages as it remained at the end of the fuel supply chain.<\/p>\n
It raised questions about whether Australia was equipped to handle supply chain shortages and sparked calls for more tankers to deliver fuel to the regions.<\/p>\n
RACQ principal economic specialist Ian Jeffreys warned against oversaturating Australia\u2019s fuel supply capabilities, saying it could cost consumers in the long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we need to bolster our supply chains? Look, I think not, because this is a one-in-50-year event,\u201d Mr Jeffreys told Business Now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose problems have largely been addressed and if we \u2026 doubled the tanker fleet, we’d have a lot of tankers sitting around unused most of the time and we’d all be paying for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s the cost of a more robust supply chain. Ultimately (it) would be paid for all of us in higher fuel prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the current fuel supply chain operations were best equipped to service Australians in the long-term, despite the brief supply chain disruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fuel industry, like every other industry, runs a just-in-time supply chain. That’s proven to be the most efficient and the most cost-effective way of delivering product to market,\u201d Mr Jeffreys said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, when we have an event such as this, and this is a one-in-50-year event, we do see that supply chain demand exceeding the capacity of the supply chain to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n
His call comes as more uncertainty about oil supply remains after talks between Iran and the United States collapsed.<\/p>\n
Iran continues to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to the vast majority of ships, despite striking a brief ceasefire last week and agreeing to open the strait.<\/p>\n
The ongoing fuel shortages are felt across service stations around the nation.<\/p>\n
Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Monday confirmed NSW has 109 fuel stations without diesel while Victoria has 34 stations without diesel and 17 without unleaded.<\/p>\n
Queensland has 36 without diesel and 20 with no unleaded, while South Australia has four with no diesel and 17 with no unleaded.<\/p>\n
WA has seven without diesel and 23 with no unleaded and Tasmania has 10 lacking any diesel and four without unleaded.<\/p>\n
NT has four with no diesel and two with no unleaded and the ACT has one station without diesel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australians would face higher fuel costs in the long term if the nation purchased more fuel tankers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,5517,164,2572,35431,245718,5575,5520,11228,143126],"class_list":["post-604965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-diesel","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-fuel","tag-ian-jeffreys","tag-iran","tag-petrol","tag-racq","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604965","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=604965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}