Alan Kohler

Yes, well, I followed up this morning and what they call the cracker, which is the RCCU, which stands for Residue Catalytic Cracking Unit, is still offline.

So the production of diesel and jet fuel is still at 80%.

Petrol is 60%.

While the cracker is offline, they expect to get it going again in June, at which point production will go to 90% of capacity.

So why it's not 100%, I'm not sure, but there it is.

As for what caused the fire, they haven't yet said.

They know yet.

Well, yes, it will, obviously, if they can't get the cracker back online in June.

They're saying they will, so it should be okay.

I mean, clearly, the main issue for fuel prices is what happens to the Strait of Hormuz.

And, well, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have been talking about that in Beijing the last couple of days, and I think maybe China is now going to start pressuring Iran to open it.

So we'll see what happens.

The answer is no.

There's been a lot of talk about it, and in fact I've seen some stories on TV about people starting to use 10% ethanol and all this, or that they should start using that, but I don't think it's really happening.

And there is no evidence that the demand or production of biofuels has actually increased.

Oh, well, it'll probably put a bit of a dampener on them.

Anyway, the coalition's making it clear that they're against electric vehicles, or at least they're against subsidising them, and fair enough.

I doubt that people need subsidies for electric vehicles anymore.

I mean, it's all about Chinese ones now, not Teslas, which are expensive.

The Chinese ones are pretty competitively priced and the prices are coming down.