This is a modified version of a paper prepared privately for the
Australian Transport Research Forum in Adelaide, 29 September 2004. As
a result, this review still shows vestiges of its transport origins and
hence focusses on demand-side rather than supply-side countermeasures.
Bruce Robinson
Perhaps the most compelling (but still largely unrecognised) evidence
of the lack of even short-term sustainability in Australia is our very
serious dependence on rapidly declining petroleum sources. Petroleum is
currently essential for agriculture and most facets of Australia's
community life and economic systems as well as for transport. Many
people assume, wrongly, that medium and short-term supplies are
assured. There is rapidly mounting evidence from the oil industry
itself that this complacency about future oil supplies may well be very
misplaced , for example Akehurst (2002).
Almost 80% of Australia’s petroleum use is in transport. 55% of road
transport fuel is petrol, 39% diesel and 6% is LPG, and Australia uses
about 45,000 megalitres of petroleum each year.
Compared to other regions, Australia has a good level of understanding
of practical demand management strategies (especially from successful
and long-standing water conservation measures). This knowledge coupled
with our existing still unallocated reserves of natural gas provides an
encouraging opportunity for us both to forecast and to weather the
coming oil shortage storms better than many other regions. It is
particularly important that the issues are tackled seriously and
urgently by major stakeholders, including the community.
Figure
1: Australia’s vulnerability to oil depletion is shown in these
diagrams of past Australian and world oil production and future decline
predictions. (Australian data and forecasts from APPEA (2004). Global
predictions after Bauquis (2004). IEA is the International Energy
Agency; ASPO is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. A
majority of estimates of the peak of world oil production cluster
between the present and 2020 (Andrews and Udall (2003))
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Oil Depletion Overview 
