Find more oil, waste it less

Australia is a huge island in a remote corner of the world. Everything we eat, move or trade relies on ships, planes, trucks, tractors and trains. These all run on hydro-carbon fuels.

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Yet every Ministerial statement on energy prattles on endlessly about wind, solar and geothermal energy. For the foreseeable future, our mobile machinery will run on oil, gas, or electricity from coal. It is time to focus on energy security, particularly domestic oil exploration, production and refining capacity. Far too much exploration land is locked up in No-Go areas such as marine parks, national parks, world heritage areas, aboriginal reserves and other restricted areas and red tape hampers any new production or refining facility. Oil tankers pose far more threat to the coastline and the Great Barrier Reef than would a few oil production platforms and far less eyesore and hazard than hundreds of wind towers. A few inconspicuous oil wells would also disfigure the outback environment far less than thousands of solar panels, and do less environmental damage than cultivating vast tracts of land to turn food into ethanol. When the next war closes the foreign oilfields or the sea lanes, and Australians are trying to run their farm trucks on charcoal burners or waste cooking oil, we will remember the fools who locked up our own oil on our own land.

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