Venting Some Frustration

[gts4diehard]

Talking about economics, I remember a term called 'competitive advantage', i.e. countries take advantage of the resources they have to improve their returns, i.e. we are in a huge country with not many people, where the minerals and farm produce aren't close to ports, and our cities are large and spread out with dodgy public transport systems.

One of our advantages is our 70% of fuel we produce that we should be using to our benefit, so we can move our products as cheaply as possible and provide services over our vast country as cheaply as possible. We need to take advantage of everything we can, otherwise we will have no manufacturing industry left... Australia faces big issues in the future, no rain = crappy agricultural returns, expensive manufactured goods (with higher input and transport costs) = lost sales and closed industries and manufacturing goes somewhere else, and digging holes can't last for ever. Nuclear power stations are making a comeback, especially in the countries that are big buyers of our coal.

Competitive advantage is the main reason everything is made in China, their competitive advantage is their cheap labour.

We can only hope that the Chinese become as consumer driven as the West is, so that they demand higher wages to buy their own plasmas and their costs are forced upwards.

The world is in for some interesting times in the future, water shortages, food shortages, rising sea levels, the need to shift energy production from fossil to renewable means... if only we can export our solar power

Sounds a bit gloomy but there are huge opportunities for those companies that come up with solutions for the current issues, but for the time being I think we have to pretty much accept that we will all be reaching into our pockets more and more.

[Ska]

Stateline transcript below:

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PHILIP WILLIAMS: The price of petrol keeps going up and up, and the Rudd Government appears powerless to do anything about it.

And economists say petrol prices are now hurting households as much as interest rates that's putting many Canberra families under financial stress.

But is there an obvious solution to the fuel crisis already available in Canberra, one that cuts fuel bills by 60 per cent or more.

Gordon Taylor reports.

GORDON TAYLOR: There's hardly a day goes by that crude oil futures don't hit a new all-time high. The psychological barrier of $US200 is barrel is fast approaching.

Almost immediately, motorists feel the hit. As petrol prices rocket towards $2 a litre.

Prompted by hefty fuel bill, drivers in Canberra, like elsewhere, are seeking solutions. But there is a cheap alternative already available in Canberra. It's compressed natural gas, or CNG.

The same gas we have in our homes.

OLLIE CLARK, NATURAL GAS VEHICLE ASSOCIATION: Globally, there are about 800 million vehicles on the roads of the world and there's about 8 million natural gas vehicles starting to pull up at a garage as if you would for petrol and you plug your car into the gas splice.

GORDON TAYLOR: Canberra has one CNG filling station at Fyshwick. Run by gas distributor Alinta on behalf of ACTEW-AGL, it has 105 customers, including Dennis Rocha, whose family car runs on CNG.

GORDON TAYLOR: The bowser tells it all, just 58.5 cent s a cubic metre, that's equivalent to 53 cents a litre for petrol. For Dennis Rocha, it's just $20 to fill the tank.

DENNIS ROCHA: I think we will probably save more than two-thirds of what we would normally spend, same mileage for mileage.

GORDON TAYLOR: Natural gas provides fuel for an energy starved world, while its environmental credentials are equally impressive. CNG's greenhouse emissions are 80 per cent lower than petrol. Used widely overseas, it's a fuel that's been ignored in Australia and that's despite Australia selling off natural gas by the ship load to countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

OLLIE CLARK: The thing that strikes me as being rather quaint to put it wildly is that we pay anywhere in about $8 billion to $25 billion to import the oil and we get poultry $4 billion for the gas that we sell to overseas countries. It seems odd to me, especially given that gas is a superior fuel for many, many purposes, including the use in motor vehicles.

GORDON TAYLOR: Canberra's buses prove the fuel's credentials. Action has

54 natural gas powered buses with a further 16 soon to arrive.

TOM ELLIOT, ACTION: We've moved to compressed natural gas because of the price of fuel, because they represent the best you could buy at the time and also because their emissions are lower than our current fleet of diesel bus.

GORDON TAYLOR: So why is there little up take of a fuel source that is both cheap and clean? For LBG conversions, car owners get a $2,000 Federal Government rebate, a rebate not available for CNG conversions.

In a classic chicken and egg scenario, the Government says unlike LPG, CNG is only available at a very small number of outlets. For this reason, the Government is supporting LPG and not CNG.

In the end, though, the issue may be taken out of the Government's hands by pure economics.

MARTIN FERGUSON, FEDERAL ENERGY & RESOURCES MINISTER: Only about a decade of oil resources remaining at today's production rate, Australia is looking down the barrel of a $25 billion trade deficit of petroleum products by 2015.

GORDON TAYLOR: John Bamford is a local engineer who has worked in the government and the gas industry for more than 30 years promoting natural gas powered cars. A world leader in the early 90s, Australia developed a 10/10 plan: 10 per cent of cars on natural gas in 10 years.

JOHN BAMFORD: I think the time has come, perhaps, to have another 10/10 plan. And think where we could be 10 years from now.

GORDON TAYLOR: But there is strong resistance to natural gas in Australia.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle for natural gas is the establishment of a network of service stations supplying the gas. The oil companies have no financial interest in supplying CNG. Many service stations have been approached to have a CNG bowser alongside the petrol pumps. All have refused.

DENNIS ROCHA: We should have more gas station all over the country so when you stop to buy you have a choice of petrol and natural gas.

JOHN BAMFORD: Canberra is an excellent place to establish in effect a small, relatively small component using natural gas vehicles. And some of the reasons for that are that Canberra or the ACT is a relatively small geographic area. By having, for example, four refuelling stations scattered around Canberra, it becomes possible to have a refuelling station within reach of most motorists.

GORDON TAYLOR: But even that may not be necessary. Already being tested in Melbourne is a home filling station that plugs into the gas supply, and fills your car at home. Expect to hear more on that, though, not only does it bypass the petrol companies and their monopoly on fuel it also avoids the excise tax that is Government is now imposing on CNG and the Government hardly wants to lose the $14 billion a year in excise tax it currently collects on petrol.

GORDON TAYLOR: None of that is deterring Dennis Rocha, of course, as the price of petrol goes up and up.

DENNIS ROCHA: I silently smile to myself because I'm using gas, so that's good money saved. We should be using it for a long time to come.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Maybe we should be

Text from:

http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/act/conten...06/s2269708.htm