JAKARTA – The Australian government has begun to study the construction of a new domestic oil refinery for the first time in more than 60 years in an effort to strengthen national energy resilience.
As quoted by Reuters, the federal government, together with the Western Australian State Government, has allocated A$4 million to prepare a feasibility study for the construction of the oil refinery.
Australia currently still relies on imports to meet about 80% of its fuel needs. Recent conflicts involving Iran have further prompted the government to accelerate efforts to secure domestic energy supplies.
Most Australian oil refineries were built in the 1950s to 1960s.
However, high operating costs and the development of large-capacity refineries in Asia have led to most of these facilities ceasing operations in the last three decades.
Federal Minister for Resources Madeleine King said the construction of a new refinery was an important part of the strategy to strengthen national energy supply security, especially after Western Australia lost all of its oil processing capacity.
“This is about fuel resilience for the entire country, but of course Western Australia no longer has fuel processing capacity after the closure of the BP facility in Kwinana in 2021. So, this is a very important initiative.”
Currently, Australia only has two operating oil refineries, namely Ampol’s facility in Queensland and Viva Energy’s in Victoria. This number is a drastic decrease compared to the eight refineries that were still operating in 2000.(DH)
This translation was generated by AI (Google Gemini) from Indonesian.