What happens if the oil stops running?
Social collapse, civilisational collapse. Rumours of its imminence come and go over the years. Now, the Defence Department and other institutions are starting to warn of the possibility. It is not ecological collapse, not the effects of global heating that is the immediate risk. It is oil. Not the peak oil that became the focus and the fear well over a decade ago, more the sudden cutting-off of Australia’s oil supply due to events in the region. The possibility is dire.
“THE FUTURE is uncertain but the end is always near.”
When Jim Morrison, singer with the 1970s rock band, The Doors, said that, he could well have been talking about contemporary times too. Stories of social, even civilisational collapse have become all-too-familiar since Jim made his comment.
Those of us who have been around awhile will remember hearing claims like this way back in the seventies and beyond. Then, the threat was believed to come from ovepopulation, a shortage of resources, a collapsing ozone layer (we fixed that through international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, setting a precedent for cooperation in ameliorating global heating), agricultural chemical and other pollution and more—not to mention the nuclear prospects of the Cold War we grew up with. The problem in recycling tales of imminent civilisational collapse is that people become inured to them and can miss the one that is authentic. The uptick in predicting something that could happen is that you may well be right at some time or other.
The impacts of global heating are usually postulated as likely to trigger social, ecological and economic collapse. We might not have to await those things collapsing our civilisation, however. There is a possibility that we could get a taster well before that.
The liquid fuel situation
Australia is nearing 100 percent reliance on imported liquid fuels. The Bass Strait fields reached peak production in 1985 after supplying two-thirds of Australia’s oil. Then, Australia had a larger number of oil refineries than its current two.
Petrol, diesel and aviation fuels are the dominant transport fuels used in Australia. In 2012–13 they accounted for 90 percent of transport energy used, but little of them came from Australian oilfields.
In 2019–20:
- 33% of Australia’s automotive gasoline was imported from Singapore
- 29% from South Korea
- 9% from the US.
Our main sources of diesel diesel fuel were:
- 24% Singapore
- 19% Japan
- 16% China.
Crude oil-main sources:
- 21% Africa
- 13% United Arab Emirates.
Diesel fuel is critical to the trucking industry as well as to intercity rail transport and to a large number of private vehicles. Without a continuous supply of diesel fuel the trucks stop, goods are not delivered and nor is food. Farms, too, rely on diesel for their machinery.
Are there alternative fuels?
Yes, there are. Some are already in use. Others are only additives to diesel fuel. Another is now in its implementation stage, however Australia lags other countries in its adoption.
Compressed natural gas may have some potential as an alternative transport fuel and is already used by an estimated 3000 vehicles, according to Energy Network Australia. Western Australia dominates production, supplying 56 percent of national exports from the state’s North West Shelf, the largest production region according to Energy magazine. Queensland produces 29 percent and the Northern Territory 15 percent.
Other alternative fuels like biodiesel would require a substantial area to be devoted to growing the raw material were it to replace imported liquid fuels, however because it is added to diesel the vulnerability of diesel to import disruption remains. It is the same for ethanol.
Without liquid fuels Australia does not move. Unless, that is, it moves rapidly to electrify its transport fleet, both private and commercial vehicles and the national rail network. In November 2021, the federal government put its attitude to vehicle electrification into reverse, stepped back on its criticism of Labor Party policy on electrification and promised funding to enlarge the number of electrical vehicle charging stations around the country and to fund carbon capture and storage start-ups. In early December 2021, the ACT government announced the introduction of zero-interest loans up to AU$15,000 for purchase of electric vehicles so as to stimulate their adoption. These changes would go some way to ameliorating the impact of a sudden cutting-off of the liquid fuel supply. Next should come the electrification of the national rail network. Whether electricity would be the energy source for the high-speed rail connection between Sydney and Newcastle, the first stage of what could become an East Coast high-speed network were the Labor Party to win the next federal election, we don’t know.
What could happen?
What could happen were our liquid fuel supply to be cut off has been exercising the minds of the Australian Parliament, the Defence Department, Engineers Australia and the National Road and Motor Association, as well as academics and journalists who focus on resource and security issues. The hypothetical scenarios they have developed are in the shorter term rather than any longer-term collapse due to global heating or peak oil. They leave us with little, and in some cases almost no lead time to adapt.
The scenarios focus on the vulnerability of Australia’s liquid fuels supply chain to disruption. That could come through a conflict between China and the US in the Asia-Pacific region, an eventuality that could strangle our trade routes and supply lines. It could be preceded by, or come simultaneously with a cyber attack on Australia’s communications, economic, medical and transportation infrastructure. Cyber vulnerability is a possibility that has become a focus of Australian cyber-security and national security interests.
The Defence Department scenario
Formulating disaster scenarios, such as a sudden cessation of petroleum supplies and responses to them, falls within the ambit of the Defence Department.
The consequence of a significant reduction (imports transiting regions outside potential conflict zones may still arrive, however they would meet only partial demand and there are other factors that could compromise their delivery) or a complete cessation of oil imports is for a rapid and partial, or perhaps a complete collapse of the national economy with all that follows regarding transportation, medical services, communications, food supply, municipal water systems and more.
A 2019 report by the Defence Department’s director of preparedness, Cheryl Durrant, and Engineers Australia identified threats to the nation. These include:
- conflict between China and the USA; this would likely be in the South and/or East China Sea-Taiwan region as well as in the wider South West Pacific region
- climate change and natural disasters
- rise of nationalist governments
- pandemic.
Prescient and accurate
The report was both prescient and accurate in identifying natural disasters. Its prediction preceded the devastating 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires in Australia. In identifying pandemnic as a risk the findings forecast the Covid-19 pandemic around a year later.
It was also correct in mentioning the possibility of conflict between China and the US. Anyone who follows regional geopolitics knows that the potential for disruption to the liquid fuel supply chain is significant were the present tensions to collapse into conflict between the two superpowers — or a substantial stand-off develop that discouraged commercial shipping from transit of the South China Sea. So far, the tensions between China and the US in the region have consisted on naval confrontations and verbal warning as well as overflights of Chinese military aircraft of Taiwan’s air defence zone (not over Taiwanese territory itself), and the accompanying sabre-rattling and war of words between the contestants. Behind the tensions is China’s threat to invade and seize Taiwan as well as China’s seizing reefs and islands in the South China Sea and establishing military bases on them over the past decade. It also stems from the US’ determination not to cede its dominance in the region to China.
The fear is that in a conflict, that could involve Australia, China could deny access to the sea lanes that the Australian economy relies on for its foreign trade and importation of liquid fuels. Speaking to The Australian newspaper, Andrew Hastie MP said that our imported diesel and jet fuel reliance on South China Sea shipping lanes puts Australia in a vulnerable position in that China could coerce Australia by threatening to disrupt our liquid fuel supply. Blackmail, in other words. The precedent is China’s blocking of Australian food, timber and coal imports (and here, and here) during its 2021 economic warfare campaign against Australia.
Fifty percent of Australia’s diesel and 60 percent of our jet fuel comes through the South China Sea. Around 58 percent of crude oil and feedstock comes from the Asia Pacific according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum’s evidence to the Defence White Paper 2016. A conflict or substantial stand-off in the South or East China Sea would disrupt that supply. Nations supplying Australia could cease supplying us with liquid fuels, preferring to retain supplies for their own national security in the event of a sudden deterioration in China-US relations. The precedent for that was nations ceasing the export of foods during the food crisis around 2007.
It might be possible to get by on fuel supplies that do not transit the South China Sea, however it is likely that to do that, fuel rationing would be necessary. Imports of crude oil from Africa and the United Arab Emirates could be increased, however Australia’s refining capacity has dwindled to two refineries, creating a potential bottleneck in fuel processing and distribution.
At the time when the Defence White Paper was in production, 2015, Australia’s total stockholding of oil and liquid fuel comprised:
- two weeks of supply at sea
- five to 12 days supply at refineries (of which only two remained by 2021, the others having been closed by the petrochemical corporations as uneconomic or converted into fuel import hubs)
- ten days of refined stock at terminals
- three days supply at service stations.
(Source: Engineers Australia to a 2015 Senate inquiry into the Australia’s energy resilience and sustainability).
In 2020, an Australian Parliament assessment of liquid fuel supply found reserves to consist of:
- automotive gasoline-25 days
- diesel-20 days
- aviation fuel-143 days.
The Canberra Times in late 2021 reported Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg emphasising the situation by saying that liquid fuel including petrol, diesel and jet fuel accounted for 98 percent of Australia’s transport fuel and 37 percent of our overall energy use.
The trend of these findings over the years underlines the vulnerability of Australia’s reliance on oil-based fuels.
Building reserves
While oil prices were suppressed last year, the federal government invested $94 million to bolster the national stockpile of crude oil, however this only adds a limited volume to existing reserves. The arrangement is that it is stored in the US because Australia lacks the storage capacity. The government also announced $200 million in competitive grants to industry to build more diesel storage and to build an industry-based stockholding of petrol and aviation fuels to cover 28 days of consumption by 2024. The aim is to increase diesel stocks by 40 percent, an extra 780 megalitres.
Are there any precedents to learn from?
For the Defence Department scenario? No. It paints a grim picture.
As the fuel supply goes into decline as a crisis sets in, it is likely that sooner rather than later government will impose fuel rationing. Rationing is no stranger to our societies. It was imposed during the Second World War. Then, in 1956, England, France and Israel invaded Egypt and the Suez Crisis got underway. Syrians sabotaged the Trans-Arabian and the Iraq–Baniyas pipelines, disrupted the supply of oil to Western Europe. Rationing was introduced.
The big wake-up call to the oil-dependent industrialised nations came in 1973 with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war between Israel and the Arab states. Slighted by the West’s support for Israel, the Middle East’s oil producing Arab states turned off the oil taps to Western nations. This brought changes negative over the short term and positive over the longer.
On the negative side we must count the rationing of petrol in the US where vehicles with license plates having an odd number as the last digit could to fill up on odd-numbered days of the month, and drivers with even-numbered license plates could fill up only on even-numbered days. Highway speeds were temporarily reduced to lessen fuel consumption. The 1973 oil crisis brought significant increases in the price of oil. By the time of the embargo’s ending in March 1974 the price of oil had risen nearly 300% in US.
The oil crisis of 1973 affected Australia. We had fuel rationing during the Second World War and the oil crisis of 1973–74 saw its reintroduction with limits on fuel purchases.
On the positive side we must count the sudden awakening to the vulnerability of the energy pipeline from oil producing nations and how they could blackmail industrialised countries. This stimulated renewed interest and research into renewable energy sources, auto manufacturers designing vehicles that were more fuel efficient and the birth of the idea of energy conservation. There was also renewed interest in sourcing fossil fuels domestically and in nuclear energy.
The West recovered from these crises. How and whether Austraia would from a sudden disruption to the oil fuel supply due to a geopolitical crisis, especially if it is prolonged, is something we can only ponder in our darker moments because, as the scenarios foretell, it would be traumatic and would affect everyone.
Why it matters
It matters because even a limited shortfall in fuel supply would likely affect all of us and possibly bring limits on movement as well as job loss on a scale greater than the lockdowns and economic contraction of the 2020–2022 Covid-19 crisis. Transportation fuel, diesel in particular, is critical to moving food, pharmaceuticals, hospital supplies, people and just about everything else around the country by road and rail. Take away the liquid fuels and those things start to run out. Then the effects of a shortage start to cascade through society.
Supplies will run down at a slower pace than would otherwise happen if fuel is rationed at the start of what looks to be a prolonged disruption. At the first sign of a crisis we would see panic buying, much as we saw happen in the UK during its 2021 fuel crisis. As well as automotive fuel for the journeys we make, farm operations would be affected as farming is as oil-dependent as the rest of society. Then there is getting farm produce to processors and into the stores. Diesel fuel is critical to the transport links through the food supply chain.
The supermarkets, as well as other businesses and services, rely on the just-in-time delivery system which delivers goods as they are needed rather than businesses maintaining a stockpile. It relies on a steady flow of diesel to power the trucks that deliver the food and other goods. The system proved resilient enough during the panic buying that came with the first phase of the pandemic. Empty supermarket shelves were due to people rushing to stock-up as they were uncertain how long the pandemic and the lockdowns would go on. The just-in-time system was designed to cope with continued steady demand rather than substantial and sudden demand. Empty shelves were a temporary phenomenon. Then came the empty supermarket shelves of the omicron outbreak in early 2022. That demonstrated another vulnerability for the just-in-time logistic system—how global crises can remove workers from the supply chain and in doing so cause shortages.
The security of our liquid fuels supply matters because around the time of the Senate Enquiry, the National Roads and Motor Association found that Australia’s fuel stockholding capability directly influenced the availability of food in the stores and pharmaceuticals in the hospitals. The organisation itemised the limits to supply for a range of basic needs:
- chilled and frozen foods—7 days supply available
- dry goods—9 days
- retail pharmacy supplies—7 days
- hospital pharmacy supplies—3 days
- petrol stations—3 days.
The limits to pharmaceutical supply suddenly became obvious when, in January 2022, the federal government announced a change in Covid testing policy and told people to do their own testing using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT). The trouble was that the tests were largely unavailable and what was available were quickly swooped up, leaving pharmacies empty handed. It was a supply chain issue again. RATs were imported, and with transport and other staff away from work with Covid or as close contacts of Covid cases, the supply chain was faltering. It was another example of the rapidity with which crises can develop and of the vulnerability of supply chains.
AdBlue—a crisis averted
We learned about Australia’s vulnerable supply chains just a couple months before the RAT supply failure when, in mid-November 2021, Australia’s reliance on imported liquid fuels suddenly came to the fore.
That was when the National Road Transport Association announced that China had stopped exporting urea, an additive used to make AdBlue that removes pollution from the exhaust of diesel trucks. China has diverted its domestic supply of urea to fertiliser production.
Amid warnings that trucks would stop running in a few months time were the supply to dry up, that this would affect food and grocery deliveries to supermarkets and that the price of diesel would rise, the Association pushed the government to source alternative supply and to boost production in Australia. A temporary supply was sourced from Indonesia with a prospective supply coming from the Middle East. In January, the government announced measures to boost domestic production. This was underway by the middle of the month.
The AdBlue shortfall, like the Covid19 pandemic, demonstrates the velocity of crises in today’s interconnected world. They also demonstrate a weakness in the globalised trading system, of relying on overseas suppliers with lengthy and vulnerable supply chains, and allowing domestic industry to run down. Now that we are entering an era of environmental, economic and political uncertainty, it provides the incentive to develop local supply in essential goods.
Timeline to collapse
The impact of a stand-off or conflict in the South West Pacific, the wider Indo-Pacific region or the South or East China seas would depend upon its duration. In a stand-off between China and the US, which could involve Australia militarily including the basing of US forces here (US military forces already rotate through the Northern Territory), much would depend on whether merchant marine operators felt it safe to send their ships through the region to continue to supply Australia with fuels and to carry Australia’s trade goods to and from their destinations. Most of the shipping servicing Australia is foreign-owned, another vulnerability because it places control of shipping outside of the country. International trade worth US$3.37 trillion passed through the South China Sea in 2016. According to the Energy & Sustainability Network, almost 40 percent of global liquefied natural gas transits the South China Sea.
A stand-off is a temporary, knife-edge affair that either tilts into a negotiated stand-down or into conflict. The potential for accidental conflict is high. Unless the communications channel between the belligerents works to defuse any accidental engagement (there was a communications channel between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War) the situation can all-to-easily slip into a broader conflict.
What would happen in a scenario where a stand-off or conflict in the South or East China Sea cuts liquid fuel supply? The Defence Dapartment and Engineers Australia’s unreleased report makes sobering reading. In the event of a cut to supply, the Defence Department report disclosed this scenario:
DAY 0
- public and industrial hoarding
- panic buying starts
- shortages of specialised medicines start to become apparent.
WEEK 1
- water treatment systems start to fail (a large portion of chemicals used in municipal water supply treatment are imported)
- export sector is affected
- mass workplace layoffs start.
WEEK 2
- shortages of diesel fuel becomes apparent
- export mining operations cease
- copper shortage
- standards for supply of goods and services start to decline.
MONTH 1
- liquid fuel shortages affect logistics (transport of food, medicines, goods, people etc)
- fuel supplies start to run out.
MONTH 2
- liquid fuel supply exhausted
- freight, passenger transport ceases
- civil construction supplies start to run out.
MONTH 3
- water supply networks degraded
- electricity supply and transmission degraded
- employment is scarce
- civil unrest
- software security degraded
- undersea communications cables degraded, disrupting communications and the national and international response to the crisis.
The likelihood of panic buying in the opening phase of a regional conflict is validated by its occurrence at the onset of the pandemic. This could include the projected shortage of specialised medicines.
With the liquid fuel supply exhausted by month two, Australia slips into dire territory. Rationing could spin out supplies that would be limited by the in-country fuels stockpile.
Evidence that the potential for civil unrest by month three comes from the reaction to the pandemic and measures to stem its spread. Disinformation campaigns created social distrust, anti-government sentiment, polarised public opinion and exacerbated the rallies against the government measures to stem the spread of the virus and a range of related issues during the Covid-19 emergency. It doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to see them occurring again with a fuel shortage and the rationing that could come with it, were political elements such as the far-right to take advantage of the situation as it did with the anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown actions on city streets and online. This would be in addition to social unrest stemming from food shortages. Unemployment will add to uncertainty, insecurity and the capacity of households and individuals to manage their situation. Homelessness may increase for renters and home loan defaulters unless government steps in as it did during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
By month three, the degraded electricity supply will start to affect food preparation and refrigerated storage and the pumping of water for drinking and sanitation. The result could be a severe reduction in household food security, especially for those relying on freezer storage.
Exacerbating a situation in which regional conflict is a cause would be attacks on undersea communications cables and, perhaps, communications satellites. China, Russia, India and the US have been developing anti-satellite weapons. Russia tested one of theirs in November 2021, creating a high-velocity debris field in low earth orbit that threatened the International Space Station. A disrupted communications grid would limit both commercial and official communications as well as peer-to-peer online cooperation. Global positioning satellites — America’s GPS, Russia’s Glonass system and China’s BeiDou positioning system — could be targeted, degrading terrestial navigation systems used by government, commerce and individuals. In addition could be cyber attacks on Australia’s infrastructure—communications, transport, medical and government services.
How could we respond?
Tales of collapse have become common. In the recent period they can be traced back to warnings coming from the environment movement. Later, they started to appear in the social movement around the permaculture design system, a few participants posting on social media that they looked forward to collapse happening— a case of permaculture exceptionalism, perhaps, where they could sit back in their rural retreat while the society around them crumbled, and somehow escape the consequences. That is doubtful. I’ve followed permaculture social media for some years and have seen the notion of collapse rise and fall then rise and fall again. It is one of those recurrent themes that permeate the permaculture conversation.
Solutions proposed are usually of the individualist type, many of which show how some have internalised the notion promoted by government and mainstream environmentalism that it is up to individuals to solve environmental problems rather than it being the responsibility of institutions, industry and government. We saw this again in December 2021 when the federal government abandoned its previous measures to control the Covid outbreak and the prime minister announced that self-responsibility was now the policy. Now, it has become apparent that individual actions are worthwhile but that institutional and governmental action and international cooperation are needed to solve the emerging issues.
Ameliorating the threat
As for food security, Australia has a range of climates in which a broad range of foods can be produced. Given the transport infrastructure in a fuels crisis, produce could be distributed so as to provide people with a basic but nutritionally balanced diet. The potential limiting factor is the availability of diesel fuel for road and rail transport.
The scenarios described in the reports provide support for those advocating the renewables-powered electrification of everything as a means of reducing carbon emissions. Renewable energy from sun, wind and hydro, and even continuing the use of coal for the interim, could provide electrical energy for a national, electrified transportation fleet and for electrifying households. This would reduce reliance on, and our vulnerability to, a loss of access to diesel and petrol fuels, however it would require substantial government stimulus.
Another option to petrol-proof Australia would be for government to incentivise the installation of photovoltaic panels on homes beyond the approximately one-third of Australian houses already with rooftop solar. The homes could supply power to large community-scale batteries from where they would draw energy. In effect, a local grid that could power the local area and supply excess energy to areas of energy deficit via the national grid. The batteries could be community-owned via an energy cooperative, offering a type of networked energy independence that gets around the problem of unconnected local systems in which some areas would have access to energy while their neighbouring areas do not—that would raise the social class wealth/poverty division and cause dissatisfaction and perhaps trouble.
Taking personal action
The timing, effects and responses that follow presume a conflict in the South and/or East China Sea and the disruption of trade routes leading to a cut-off or severe restriction of essential resources such as liquid fuels, as forecast in the Defence Department report. The responses are suggestions for individuals, households and communities.
Timing: Pre-day one to day one
Condition:
- crisis imminent.
Cybersecurity breached; systems infiltrated. Cyber infiltration, which Australia, the US, China and Russia are already subject to or engaged in, would be an opening move accompanying or preceding kinetic conflict. So would cyber attacks to disrups military, government, communications, commercial, medical and other services. Peer-to-peer online communications could be degraded. With decentralised sources of online information only sporadically available or perhaps unavailable, we may return to the centralised model of broadcast radio to disseminate news and information.
Response:
Prior to crisis—
- increase and maintain a supply of foods that do not require refrigeration—preserved, canned and dried foods
- maintain household reserves of goods such as pharmaceuticals (inlcuding prescription medications), cleaning and sanitation agents sufficient for prolonged unavailability, multivitamins in case of prolonged availability of particular foods
- ensure home first aid kits are complete and updated with longest-use-by-date contents; of you do not have a first aid manual, go and buy one and do a first aid course; as we saw during the Covid crisis, hospitals would treat only the most urgency cases of disease and injury because of a shortage of supplies and staff burnout
- prepare or update household and community emergency plans
- maintain home/community garden in productive state
- engage in resource mapping of local area—what food sources (including fishing and wild harvest), wood fuel, clean water, medical services, retail stores, communications (eg. amateur radio operators) etc exist nearby
- keep fit, maintain your health; you might need your fitness reserves
- have your vehicle serviced regularly to ensure it is in good working order
- keep supply of seeds of non-hybrid food species for the garden; learn seed saving and engage in seed exchange (start before a crisis appears on the horizon)
- download and install latest operating system and software updates as they include security patches
- regularly run computer security software
- install rainwater tanks, water filter
- learn to grow food in home or community gardens; plant the range of crops necessary to providing a nutritionally balanced diet including starchy root crops for carbohydrates, a grain like corn, a range of leafy green and fruiting vegetables for vitamins and minerals
- obtain essentials to make up a grab bag in case of evacuation—clothing for the seasons, food and a small bushwalkers stove, water bottles and small water purifier, medical supplies, sanitation supplies, legal and other papers including identification such as passports, a small radio, small hiker’s tent, mobile phone and recharge battery and small, lightweight solar panel to recharge mobile devices on which you will rely for news and information and contact with family and friends; store where you know how to find and pack them in a hurry, pre-pack if an emergency and the possibility of evacuation appears imminent; this is also worthwhile in bushfire and flooding-prone places
- use a map and explore the safety evacuation routes from you place to a place of refuge—where would you go? doing this will be familiar to people living in bushfire of flood-prone areas.
As a crisis develops —
- stay updated on malware threats
- keep vehicle fuel tank no less than half-full in case of need for evacuation
- if you have a garden, plant extra, especially of basic sustaining foods such as potato, sweet potato, corn and leafy greens; this will be useful if a crisis is prolonged
- buy a battery-powered radio to monitor the situation if you do not already have one; radios will keep working if digital networks some down; as they did during the bushfires of 2019–2020, stations like ABC News Radio and ABC Local Radio will provide up-to-date and emergency news.
Timing: day zero
Condition:
- public, industrial hoarding
- panic buying
- shortages of specialised medicines.
Response:
- ration use of household stockpile of food and goods
- consider topping-up supplies via internet ordering and delivery (supermarkets and home-delivery food services provide this service; consider a food delivery service sourcing from regional farmers as the long supply chains of the supermarkets are vulnerable to disruption); home delivery avoids the crowds panic buying from supermarkets, something we learned during the pandemic of 2020–2022
- monitor the news from reputable rather than dodgy social media sources and YouTube.
Timing: week 1
Condition:
- water treatment systems start to fail
- export sector affected
- mass worker layoffs start
- job loss will start to affect capacity to buy food, pharmaceuticals, fuel, goods and services.
Response:
- ration household food; retail supplies may be largely depleted by panic buying and road transport delivery delays
- conserve fuel by minimising vehicle use
- investigate possibility of starting community support networks similar to those that started with the onset of the first wave of the pandemic
- know how to filter potable water in case municipal supply falters.
Timing: week 2
Condition:
- diesel fuel shortages
- export mining operations cease
- copper shortage
- standards for supply of goods and services start to decline.
Response:
- keep diesel/petrol vehicle fuel tank above half-full or higher; rationing of fuel may be introduced
- minimise vehicle travel to conserve fuel—essential trips only
- bicycles, electric bikes and electric scooters used for local trips should be secured while shopping and at home as they are likely to become the target of thieves
- maintain your reserve of home-grown foods by preserving what is seasonally available.
Timing: month 1
Condition:
- liquid fuel shortages affect logistics
- fuel supplies start to run out.
Response:
- minimise use of vehicle — essential travel only
- keep vehicle in secure location as fuel shortage could see an increase in fuel theft from parked vehicles
- use alternative transportation—public transport, foot, bicycle, e-bike, electric scooter.
Timing: month 2
Condition:
- liquid fuel supply exhausted
- freight, passenger transport services cease
- civil construction supplies start to run out.
Response:
- with liquid fuel supply exhausted and whatever remains reserved for essential services, and the possible cessation of passenger transport services, people will become reliant on whatever local resources are available plus whatever emergency supplies can be delivered by government
- this is the time when community mutual assistance networks formed prior or at the onset of the crisis, and the resource mapping already done become more important
- this is when we could see the overexploitation of local wild food and fuel resources.
Timing: month 3
Condition:
- water supply networks degraded
- electricity supply and transmission degraded
- employment scarce
- civil unrest
- software security degraded
- undersea communications cables degraded.
Response:
- where cooperation exists, communities and households may be able to ration and maintain supply of potable water, garden produce (which should be sufficient and varied enough for a nutritionally balanced diet)
- where cooperation exists, local people may be able to organise community gardens on local government and other land; existing community gardeners would provide an experienced training corps; security of produce in the garden will be important as theft could occur.
It is hard to suggest measures beyond the first couple months. Government would be trying to keep essential services going and basic foods flowing. What is unknown is the state of law and order and whether politically motivated groups would seek to exploit existing social unrest.
Cooperate to increase coping
Australia has a positive record of community cooperation during crises. Volunteer bushfire brigades, volunteer state emergency services and volunteer support services are the better-known community initiatives.
What is apparent in the scenarios and responses is the advantage of learning skills and installing systems like rainwater tanks and water filters, home and community food gardens, photovoltaic panels and home batteries and building a store of essential foods and supplies well before any crisis develops. This might sound like prepping, however it is precautionary and need not adopt the more extreme prepper measures.
This may not be possible for the many who do not have their own dwelling and land or who might not have the funds to do some of these things. An option would be to focus on community initiatives of value in a crisis situation. Gaining experience as a volunteer with commuity food banks would be advantageous as would community gardeners developing horticultural skills so they can assist people setting up new community gardens and to expand urban agriculture. The World War Two Garden for Victory program in Australia serves as a model of personal and community initiative.
Covid a rehearsal
Events and measures in dealing with the pandemic are a rehearsal for what could happen in the event of Australia’s liquid fuel supply being cut or drastically reduced. Such an eventuality might be short-lived. But, were the political and military situation to deteriorate, it might not be so short lived at all.
The just-in-time logistics system of food and essentials deliveries to supermarkets was resilient enough to hold up during the disruptions brought by the pandemic. The reports I cite suggest the story might be different were a longer-lasting and deeper crisis to develop.
More:
Energy & Sustainability Network: almost 40% of Global Liquefied Natural Gas Trade Moves Through the South China Sea.
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