Running on empty

Reader Bushranger just found an item that should be at the top of concern for any future Australian Defence White Paper:

Running on Empty, Hoping for the Best

The simple fact, one lawmakers choose to ignore, is that Australia's security is threatened by meagre domestic oil reserves and shipping lanes' vulnerability . We could easily convert coal into liquid fuels, but only if we tap a vast reserve of shamefully squandered cash.

Heinz Guderian, the inspired tank commander of World War II, once remarked that “The engine of the panzer is just as much a weapon as the main gun.” Well, if the engine is a weapon, so is the fuel tank. And Australia’s fuel tank is near empty. We are importing 90% of the transport fuels we consume. The net effect after adding back the little bit of oil we export is still parlous and deteriorating yearly.

What to do? What we should do is not deny ourselves what China is having. China is installing near one million barrels per day of coal-to-liquids (CTL) capacity. That is about what we need — and we would be safe and secure until the coal runs out sometime next century.

CTL is the only solution to our liquid-fuel security problem. Nothing else works – not biofuels, not sunbeams. Not natural gas – the three giant refrigerators to liquefy the gas being completed in Gladstone will suck every spare methane molecule out of the east coast. Electric vehicles require the burning of coal to produce the power in the first place. Coal will take a vehicle further converted to liquid fuel than the power the same amount of coal would produce through a power plant. Diesel and petrol are storable. Electric power isn’t.

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