Petrol Prices

As petrol prices again approach $1.50 a litre in many centres we hear the usual platitudes from oil companies and politicians. PM John Howard said this week that there was no magic bullet for this chronic problem. Indulge me while I repeat the letter that I had published in The Age last August:

Step on the Gas John

John Howard invited us to ring him at The Lodge if we had the solution to high petrol prices in Australia. Well I did ring but he doesn’t live there so perhaps he’ll read my solution here. I’ll even waive my $150,000 consultancy fee for saving the nation billions. The solution is to use what we have got heaps of – natural gas. Mr Howard says of high petrol prices, ‘everybody’s got the problem, America’s got it, Europe’s got it, Asia’s got it’. Notice how he didn’t include Middle Eastern countries who are sitting on oceans of oil! They don’t have a problem. In fact Saudi Arabia cut the price of its petrol by 33% on 31 May this year to about 21 cents per litre. In other words they are driving around on the product that they have an abundance of. If Australian governments had shown some leadership in the past twenty years or so most of us would be driving around in natural gas powered vehicles instead of gloating over huge contracts with China and Japan to whom we give it for a few cents a litre. Instead we have a handful of cars and some highly publicised public buses running on the fuel that is to us what oil is to other countries. Why hasn’t this happened in Australia on a large scale? Because John Howard and his predecessors have not displayed the leadership needed to put relentless pressure on car manufacturers to develop affordable natural gas cars and to stand up to the oil companies who would resist that course. The political clout of the oil companies (Exxon recently announced it was making one billion dollars a week profit) combined with the readiness of Mr Howard to follow George Bush into the Middle East to protect America’s (and Exxon’s) thirst for oil makes the quest for a solution very elusive indeed. Not utilising our abundant natural gas for our cars is like the Saudis driving around on two dollar a litre ethanol made from date peels!