When will Australia run out of fuel?
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G'day, Matt Bevan here, this is If You're Listening. I got a message on the weekend from a listener who said that there should have been some kind of warning before Thursday's episode on Australia's history of gas deals, making sure people had taken their blood pressure medication before listening. And judging by the flood of emails we've had since that episode aired, it seems that a lot of people feel the same way. There's real frustration that as a resource rich country, Australia isn't faring better in this crisis. At the moment, we are still relying on oil that passed through the Strait of Hormuz before this whole crisis began. The last tankers to leave the Persian Gulf before the conflict are set to arrive in Australia right about now, this week.
But it's not just the domestic situation that's making hair stand on end. The entire global energy market seems to be losing its mind. We're recording this at lunchtime on Monday the 20th of April, and the price of oil is about 95 US dollars a barrel. But by the time you're listening to this, it could really be anywhere between 80 and 120 dollars. The US stock market is up about 10% over the last week or so, but it could be about to drop depending on how peace negotiations in Pakistan go over the next few hours. The volatility is extraordinary. To help us make sense of all of this, or at least try, I'm joined by ABC senior business correspondent Carrington Clark. He hosts the ABC's two newest podcasts, ABC Business Daily and Fuelcast.
He also used to be the ABC's North America correspondent based in Washington, D.C. So there may be no one at the ABC better place to talk about this than Carrington.
Carrington, hello. Gosh, I mean, I hope I can live up to that introduction. I will try my very best, but no guarantees given that I will be able to make sense of this because smarter and much better paid people than I are struggling to understand exactly what's going on.
Take us through your understanding of what's been going on over the weekend because it's been a wild few days in terms of the openness or closeness of the Strait of Hormuz.
Yeah, the last five days have been extraordinarily volatile. Now, the weekend kind of started with great optimism, great hope.
Hmm. The Strait of Hormuz is fully open and ready for business and full passage.
The Strait of Hormuz, this important choke point for the world's energy supply that we've all become so now intimately involved or engaged with, was back open for business. But that was very short-lived. The issue seemed to be America said, well, their blockade wasn't actually going to be lifted. Their blockade was on ships going to Iran's ports and trying to transport either goods from or to Iran. And so then Iran said, well, if you're not going to lift your blockade, then we're not going to allow ships connected to other countries to continue traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
This means a violation of the ceasefire. If it continues, Iran will take the necessary measures with the Strait of Hormuz.
And they followed up their threat by actually firing on ships that were trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. And then we saw this extraordinary escalation where the U.S.
What is the current state of Australia's fuel supply?
actually both fired at an Iranian flagged cargo ship and then took control of it.
Vacate your engine room. Vacate your engine room. We're prepared to subject you to disabling fire.
So you've got live fire once again, either in the Strait of Hormuz or around it.
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