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The Diesel Hostage
Every country measures its fuel safety in days, but a headline stockpile may not keep trucks moving
Australia kept its emergency oil in Texas. It bought about 1.7 million barrels during the 2020 crash and left them in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, on the far side of the Pacific from every Australian engine. The lease had room for 25 million barrels. The country filled about a fifteenth of it, just under two days of what Australia burns. A US Senate committee looked over the deal and called it “mostly an accounting matter.”
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the world’s oil importers agreed to pour emergency stocks onto the market. Australia’s contribution was a pledge to release the stocks held on its behalf in the US reserve. So their share of the world’s emergency was oil that had never come within ten thousand kilometres of their massive island.
More or less like a spare tyre kept in someone else’s car. It’s legal, it counts, and it works fine until the day you get a flat and have no idea where the other driver parked.
And this year, everybody got the flat at the same time.
