Carrington Clarke

The national average price of unleaded has stayed about level at $1.85 per litre.

And the national average price of diesel has dropped to $2.60 per litre.

Today, I'm joined by Alan Kohler to dig into the major energy headlines.

Good morning, Alan.

Good morning, Carrington.

Alan, it's only in the last 20 minutes or so that Donald Trump has announced that so-called Project Freedom, which was supposed to be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,

is on pause to allow for further negotiations with Iran.

So it seems Project Freedom is almost over before it began and seemingly only allowed the passage of, is it two American flagged ships to go through that straight?

What do you make of it all?

Another odd move in this enduring conflict, it seems.

Alan, I want to talk about China and its role in this conflict and how it has been affected by this global oil supply shock.

Now, it is a massive consumer of oil and it is the biggest, in normal times, purchaser of Iranian oil.

oil.

How has China played this conflict and what's your assessment of how impacted it has been?

It was actually noted in the Statement of Monetary Policy.

We were there yesterday at the Reserve Bank going through this document.

This accompanies yesterday's decision to hike interest rates.

And it looked at how Australia's major trading partners had been impacted by the war.

And it noted that China has been relatively well insulated.

because of this policy of making sure it had a large reserve of crude and, as you said, by restricting how much fuel it has sent overseas.