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TRANSCRIPT
The body set up to deal with energy shocks, the International Energy Agency, has delivered its own.
Director Fatih Birol, sharing this grim pronouncement: the current oil crisis is more than twice as severe as the worst in history.
“Many of us remember the two consecutive oil crises in 1970’s, 1973 and 1979. And at that time, in each of the crisis, the world has lost about 5 million barrels per day, both of them together 10 million barrels per day. And after that, we all know that there was major economic problems around the world, the recessions. And today, only as of today, we lost 11 million barrels per day.”
That statement, delivered at the National Press Club in Canberra, putting a number to an emerging panic; as countries around the world grapple with managing their fuel supplies.
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman, says while a range of options are being considered to ensure a secure fuel supply in Australia, the government is not looking at using emergency fuel powers.
Under the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act the government has powers to direct supply to where it is needed.
“What we have continued to do is to make sure that we look at all the things necessary to keep the range of supplies to Australia there. So that we do have fuel for businesses, for our farms, for our cities. And Australia is a net energy exporter. That is something that I think we're rightly proud of. It is a big part of our economy. It is also a big part of the discussion about making sure that we do have sovereign energy capability, but also really good productive dialogue with our trading partners.”
The government is also under pressure to enact a wartime provision which would impose a 25 per cent tax on gas exports - with Greens leader Larissa Waters backing the call.
“Tax the gas corporations who are exporting our gas and making record profits, while ordinary people pay the price.”
Even with supply - cost is a concern; NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury says prices are at record highs.
The increases just in the last week alone have been significant. The increase in the unleaded price in the last seven days has gone up 23 cents a litre across the country. Diesel even worse at 35 cents a litre, on average.”
It's a snapshot of what is being experienced around the world.
In the Chinese capital, Beijing, motorists queued overnight ahead of an expected hike to the country's fuel price cap.
It was a similar picture in India, where many petrol stations are choked with customers vying to fill their vehicles.
Ahmedabad resident Altaf Sayyad says the situation is severe.
"Nobody knows why this is happening. We have been stuck at the petrol pump for the past one-and-a-half to two hours. Men and women, everyone is stuck. We don’t know why this is happening.”
The International Energy Agency recently made a historic release of 400 million barrels of oil from global emergency reserves.
France's former representative to the IEA, Professor Thierry Bros, says despite the volume of the release, it won't plug the gaps in the world's supply - it can't be released fast enough.
"We have these 400 million barrels, but we can’t release them right away. We don’t have the pipelines; they aren’t designed for that. We don’t have the capacity—the IEA doesn’t have the capacity to put 20 million barrels a day back on the market every day.”
The agency's director, Mr Birol, did not hold back in his assessment of what must happen to avert a global crisis.
“Now we have recently released some demand side measures, how we can reduce the demand, but what we are doing is, to be very frank, to reduce the pain on the economy. The single most important solution to this problem is opening up the Hormuz Strait as things stand now.”
But there is no clear path forward for that to happen.
Markets reacted positively to US President Donald Trump's pronouncement overnight that Iran and the US are negotiating a deal.
In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump said he had told the Pentagon to "postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings."
But Iran burst the short-lived bubble of optimism, with its response to that statement.
“In reaction to Trump’s false claim, the Speaker of the Parliament emphasized that no negotiations have taken place with the US. Mr. Ghalibaf (shared) a message on social media saying that “our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors.” And mentioned that “all officials stand firmly behind their leader and people, until this goal is reached”, and that no negotiations have taken place with the US.”
But there is a concerted global effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end Iran's chokehold on global oil supply.
In recent days, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Fox News 22 countries, including many NATO members and other U-S allies \ are responding to President Trump's call to help reopen the passage.
“The good news here is that since Thursday, a group of 22 countries, most of them from NATO, but also Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, to UAE and Bahrain, most of the other countries from NATO, coming together to implement his vision of making sure that the Strait of Hormuz is free, is opening up as soon as that is possible.”
But not all allies are on board yet: Japan's Foreign Minister says its help is conditional on a ceasefire.
And the country could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz, but only if a ceasefire is reached.
Japan gets around 90 per cent of its oil shipments via the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely closed since the US and Israel waged a war on Iran.
According to Fox News' Martha MacCallum, Donald Trump told her be thinks that Japan will be there for the United States.
“He also told me that he thinks Japan is more in our corner, even though they're constitutionally restricted in terms of putting ships into the strait. He said, I believe that if we needed Japan, Japan would be there for us, even more than NATO. Which is a pretty striking statement when you look at history.”
