‘Won’t happen’: Singapore shuts down Aussie fuel fears
Motorists are being reassured they will not leave Australia’s biggest fuel supplier even as conflict in the Middle East escalates and stocks deteriorate.
Australia is locked in a supply deal with Singapore, one of the country’s biggest fuel providers, but the opposition has called for the government not to be dependent on oil and diesel exports.
Singapore has no plans to reduce exports, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said alongside Anthony Albanese at a joint press conference on Friday.
“We didn’t have to do this even in the darkest days of COVID, and we won’t do it during this energy crisis,” Mr Wong told reporters in Singapore.
More than a quarter of all fuel imported into Australia comes from Singapore, and Australia supplies about a third of the city-state’s LNG supply.
Mr Albanese and Mr Wong signed an agreement to continue trading large quantities of fuel and gas between the two countries.
The agreement states that the countries will “make maximum efforts to meet each other’s energy security needs” at a time when fuel prices have increased and many service stations are facing outages due to the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed.
It did not contain any specific guarantees that Australia would be at the front of the queue if refineries in Singapore continued to reduce production.
But Mr Wong did not respond to a question about whether Australia would be prioritized if exports had to be reduced if the energy crisis worsened.
“This won’t happen,” he said.
This obvious response prompted Mr Albanese to joke: “The Prime Minister is as confident in private as he is in public.”
National leader Matt Canavan said the crisis needed to be intervened to find a solution to the fuel crisis, adding that Australia should not remain dependent on other countries and instead look at local solutions.
“I hope the government’s successful there, but we also clearly need to do more,” he told ABC TV.
“Why do we have to go hand in hand with Singapore when we have a whole continent with plenty of oil and gas here?”
Mr Albanese said the relationship between Singapore and Australia meant they could avoid the worst of the fuel crisis.
“The best way to deal with this global crisis is actually to work together as partners and neighbors, and I look forward to continuing my relationship with the prime minister,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, Mr Albanese toured an oil refinery and liquefied natural gas terminal on Jurong Island off Singapore’s southwest coast.
Both leaders called for the reopening of the strait, through which one fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
Mr Albanese will return to Australia on Saturday.
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