by ggm | 2026-01-21 23:23:35+00:00
32 Fossil fuel firms provide the vast bulk of the fossil fuels used worldwide: That's hardly surprising, economies of scale are a thing. It wouldn't surprise me if FEWER firms provide the shipping services (for instance) at scale, for that same oil. Certainly it's fewer pipeline operators, and pipes.

In Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) terms, 32 should be a viable market to avoid single provider dominance and if there was true competition, we'd see this as sufficient to maintain pressure on customer prices and supply.

But then, we have OPEC. and Geopolitics. So the price-cost disconnect is strong, because Oil is about economic power as much as price.

Australia, unlike many other oil producing nations, does not price domestically to passify the voter, we link pump prices to Singapore. Australia, unlike many western strategic partners, does not aggressively maintain onshore stocks but until recently, kept it's strategic reserve in the US. Where .. it's entirely safe.. in the hands of a long term ally which would never.. ever..

Australia used to run several refineries. Due to world economics, and cost reasons, ignoring strategic interest, these were shut down. We now have significantly less capacity both to store, and process crude onshore.

It would be obvious as a naieve consumer of oil products in Australia, I don't think we've made wise decisions, strategically. But as a supporter of the transition to Solar, wind and Batteries, I'm pretty content with the relative economics concerning the sources of power and LCOE across our energy sector. Where oil predominates, like the farming sector and trucking, I see signs of movement. Where oil no longer predominates, I see signs that state governments (who are addicted to royalty revenues) are getting nervous. Where Gas (I mean LNG, not us "Gas" ie petrol) supply is concerned, we have fractured australia in two: one side (west australia) has price controls, and a good energy market onshore. the other side ("the eastern states") doesn't and is wracked by supply shortage risks into the future, and a soon-to-be-enacted price control regime and domestic supply reserve cannot come soon enough.

Fugitive gas releases from oil and gas wells are a worldwide disaster. I wrote yesterday about externalities in the data center space, regarding power supply. In Oil and Gas, we have the externality for the century: megatonnes of Methane being pumped into the air, because we want cheap oil. And, bogus attempts to sequester CO/CO2 which are universally shown to be unviable for sequestration, where they work perfectly well for fracking.

An Australian national election was lost off the back of a $40m anti Labor campaign run by the petro industry, because Labor threatened to introduce a new tax on petrol. I'm not saying it was the only reason Labor lost, but it sure didn't hurt the oil industry. I'd say the sector thinks it got a bargain there. Woodside, a major national oil and gas extraction company, holds papers relating to Australia-Timor relations which are officially state secrets: we gave national strategic policy over our immediate neighbours into the hands of a commercial entity with significant interest in the wells straddling the international border. How cool is that!