How Australia became hostage to fuel imports

In 2013, Shell closed its Clyde oil refinery on the Paramatta River, and a year later, Caltex closed Kurnell on Botany Bay. That was the moment when Australia went from being mostly self-sufficient in petrol and diesel to relying on imports. The oil shocks of the 1970s had been forgotten. We endured stagflation during that decade like everybody else, along with a brutal recession in the middle of it, but we were 70 per cent self-sufficient in oil and liquid fuels, so at least we could get around. The refinery closures seemed like a reasonable idea at the time: they…