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  • 3 months ago
Anthony Albanese is travelling to Singapore for a one-on-one meeting with the country’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, as Australia seeks guarantees from regional trading partners about future fuel supplies. The two countries signed an agreement last month to maintain a continued two-way flow of fuel and LNG. Saul Kavonic is Head of Energy Research at MST Financial and said the Australian government must ensure priority access using diplomatic leverage.

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00:01Essentially, it seems like an arrangement where the Australian government is going to
00:05underwrite and effectively provide a subsidy for the procurement of additional cargos and
00:13fuel into Australia. We don't have a lot more details at this point, but it's probably worth
00:20highlighting that given the shortage, which is only beginning to truly be felt across Asia now,
00:26competition for those uncontracted spot cargos, particularly of jet fuel and diesel,
00:33is going to be very high. We will start to see not just the Australian government,
00:38but other governments in the region look to support purchases in order to divert those
00:43cargos to their nations. And this is going to be part of a package of approach from the Australian
00:50government to try and make sure that we don't structurally run out of fuel. In addition to
00:57this, we will probably see the government engaging with Singapore, but other major refining neighbors
01:04of ours to try and make sure we have priority access and that other nations won't be able
01:09to divert to cargos that would otherwise be due to come to Australia to their home markets instead,
01:14leaving us short. Australia's almost entirely reliant on imports of crude and particularly
01:19products like diesel and jet fuel. And those mostly come from Singapore, South Korea, China, Malaysia.
01:28China's already shut off its exports of jet fuel to Australia in the region, which makes it even more
01:36important that we can get the existing supplies and even increased supplies from places like Singapore.
01:41The trade relationship is very strong. Australia is an exporter of energy, including LNG, to Singapore.
01:49So the government will have some diplomatic leverage there. And Singapore has a very strong,
01:53open free trade principles as a trading island nation. So this will be the first stop, I think,
02:00for the Australian Prime Minister, but it will be seeking to have similar arrangements and diplomatic
02:06pressure applying in discussions with the South Koreans and Malaysians and Japanese as well.
02:11well done.
02:12Well,
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