The Oil Drum

This is a guest post from Richard Griffiths.

Richard writes: This is a draft submission to the Inquiry into the Oil Excise Bills, which I would like to present to Oil Drum readers for feedback. Submissions to the inquiry can entered up to July 7. As you probably know the issue is whether/how the federal govt. should introduce excise on condensates produced from the NW Shelf off the WA coast.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/economics_ctte/excise_bills_08/index.htm

Long-Term Petroleum Decline

The requirement for taxation of oil and condensate production in Australian territory should be seen in the context of the long-term decline of total oil production from a peak in 2000 (ASPO-Australia 2006:2).

In this context, oil represents a unique natural windfall in the history of Australia. The opportunities presented now will never be repeated. For Australia, oil is not a 'once-in-a-lifetime' event, but a once-in-a-civilisation event. Given the huge amounts of money involved in the sale of Australian oil and oil products, it makes sense to consider the inter-generational equity of the present opportunity. How, if at all, will future generations of Australians benefit from the wealth produced in these few decades?

The crude oil excise regime established by the Whitlam government in the 1970s recognised the need to capture some of the benefits of oil production for the wider community, including future Australians. We are now experiencing some of the benefits of that decision. However, there is a strong case to be made for closing loopholes in the existing framework, so that this value capture can be effected efficiently and comprehensively. There is no strong argument for exemption other than the usual one - that no-one likes to be taxed.

The long awaited Garnaut report (pdf) is out at last, prompting an explosion of media analysis.

This post is a roundup of selected articles - I encourage you all to share your thoughts in the comments.

Channel 7's "Sunrise" program is repeating their campaign from a few years ago to get the government to continue funding solar panels for everyone. You can sign the petition here.

Back in 2006, Sunrise proved that people power does work. When the Government was planning to ditch the rebate on solar panels, Sunrise viewers spoke up. Well since then, Australia has taken a backward step.

The new Government now means tests the rebate. If this plan stays, the rebate that makes solar panels affordable will only be available to households earning less than 100-thousand dollars a year.

Now, we're calling on the Government to scrap the means test. This is not a baby bonus - this is a valid incentive for ALL Australians to do something about global warming.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, CALL ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SCRAP THE MEANS TEST ON THE SOLAR PANEL REBATE.

This is a guest post from Cameron Leckie of ASPO Australia.

The first post on this series on the future of air travel¹ looked at the fuel economy of the aircraft fleets in service with QANTAS and Virgin Blue on fuel economy and fuel economy per passenger perspective. Not surprisingly, the smaller aircraft were more economical than the larger aircraft, however the larger aircraft, in general, were more economical on a per passenger basis. Thank you for all those who commented on the previous post and the information that you provided.

This post gets to the crux of the matter. Profit and loss! No business can survive on sustained losses; sooner or later it will become insolvent. This post will investigate how long Australia’s two largest airlines, QANTAS and Virgin Blue can remain profitable in the era of high oil prices.

The SMH had an interesting piece on the possible demise of the "Long Paddock" - land reserves for stockmen to move livestock around the country on foot. While it is rarely used nowadays, the land reserved for this use has a lot of environmental value - and (for those of a reversalist bent) they could possibly be revived one day if moving stock around by foot becomes the most energy efficient means of transportation to the markets - something the Queensland government seems to believe (it also maintains a website tracking rural climate issues using this name).

This is the first in a series of posts co-authored with Phoenix and Matt Mushalik. In my previous post I took a high-level look at solutions for Australia. This post starts the process of iterating down from the high-level view. It assumes that we will not be able to instantly convert to sustainable solutions - we need to get there in steps. This article is co-authored with Phoenix, a qualified mechanical engineer who has been working in the infrastructure construction industry for over 28 years. He has held senior manangement positions with a number of organisations delivering projects to key energy providers. These projects have included oil refineries, power stations, LNG plants and gas processing facilities. He currently works as the National Manager – Power Generation for a major Australian construction group.

Action Plan

1.0 INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORT

Transport is critical to the functioning of our society. If Australia’s transportation stopped tomorrow, then most of us would be starving in the dark a few weeks later.

Yet this is exactly the scenario that is emerging. The vast majority of transport in Australia is fuelled by oil. Without oil, transport stops. And we are being warned from every direction that our oil supplies are no longer secure.

This scenario will be the most serious threat experienced by our society since the Second World War. This is the first in a series of discussions that look at ways to secure Australia’s oil based energy security into the future. Over the next few weeks we will look at short and long term goals for personal and industrial transport.

It's time to put your money where your mouth is folks - help get this ad across the country's TV screens - it doesn't get any better than this! (Explanation for international guests below)

The latest campaign from the very effective GetUp! crew is on transport and fuel prices:

The DVD is now available to buy from Aquila Productions.

Last year I took a look at the question "Should Natural Gas Be Used To Power New Zealand ?", after reading an article from NZ PEPA executive John Pfahlert arguing that New Zealand should be building new gas fired power stations instead of trying to become carbon neutral, and concluded that this seemed a rather risky strategy - depending on continuing offshore exploration success.

The view of the Australian government and gas industry seems to be that our gas supplies are essentially unlimited, with the phrase "more than a century of supplies left" bandied about at every opportunity. Ex-Prime Minister John Howard used to dream of Australia becoming an "energy superpower", with a vastly expanded gas (LNG) export industry being a cornerstone of this vision, based on Western Australian LNG exports from offshore gas fields.

In this post I'll have a look at how much gas Australia has and how long it will last under a variety of scenarios - from an indefinite continuation of the current rate of production to a pell-mell conversion to use gas for all our energy needs combined with a rapid expansion of LNG exports.