Australia's indigenous oil is mostly, sweet light crude! And is mostly sulphur-free! Is allegedly, too light to refine, but we know after minimal treatment to remove a small soluble wax content and then through a simple filtration process to remove naturally occurring sand content. Able to be used as a clean sulphur-free diesel!

What we import is the fuel created by cracking the hydrocarbon of leftover rubbish that has had all the fuel removed via fractional distillation in ME distillation plants. And consequently, their domestic petrol supplies cost just a few cents per gallon!

We pay somewhere north of an annual 26 billion (roughly equivalent to our age pension budget) for this fully imported foreign fuel! And if its the worst available? Due to the Australian asinine policy of exporting all our sweet light crude? And importing replacement rubbish because it suits the refinery process, i.e., the profit imperatives of the fossil fuel companies (cartel) who control this, maximised profit, lowest possible tax burden, trade!

If we would change this scenario for something saner!? We will need to change the government and not with the current (other side of the same coin) opposition, given that change in a two-party system changes very little of real moment! TBC
Alan B.

Our total and GOVERNMENT mandated reliance on fully imported fuel could be changed with the stroke of a pen!

Every Australian family produces enough biological waste to power their domiciles 24/7! With the bonus of endless free hot water. And done by sending this waste to a locally invented two-tank biodigester system. Where it's converted to carbon-rich soil improver and maximised methane production. Which by and large is the same product as natural gas! The addition of food scraps and bio-digestible wastage creates a salable surplus!

Now, if the methane burning diesel is replaced with another Aussie invention, ceramic fuel cells, the energy coefficient is more than doubled to around 80%, the highest possible? The salable surplus is also increased to somewhere north of 50% in the outcome.

This saleable surplus could be used overnight to recharge the family's electric vehicle or compressed onsite to power any conventional vehicle with the cleanest burning fuel available anywhere! And as a bonus, with around 40% less CO2 pollution and little if any particulate material!

The other upside is the massive resuscitation and expansion of our (in the doldrums steel, industry) given the sheer number of steel tanks we need to fit and retrofit as buried systems in virtually every Australian home, over time and ASAP!

As for paying for this amenity?

Could be paid for over time by each participating customer, with the same money now consumed as their averaged power bill! As the nation pockets the annual 26 annual billions+ savings. TBC.
Alan B.

Recently we awoke to the news of massive fish kills in our inland riverine river system. As a consequence, they think of the death of massive algae populations and the consequent deoxygenation of the water?

Now, this informs us, we can and should grow oil-rich algae, given that's one of the few things we could grow as cash crops up and down the Murray/Darling! Algae double the weight and consequent oil content every 24 hours under optimised grow out conditions inside large clear plastic pipes and with the nutrients kept up. Effluent being absolutely tailor-made!

Extracting ready to use diesel and or jet fuel is child's play. The algae are first sun-dried then crushed to extract the ready to use fuel And all the carbon content extracted directly from the atmosphere!

Understand, all oil started its life millions of years ago as algae! our overused riverine systems as algae only require 1-3 % of traditional irrigation. Moreover, the only cash crop that could be grown along during any extended enduring drought!! Even then the water is only borrowed the returned with all the pathogens/nutrient load removed and further cleaned to potable quality via activated carbon filtration.

We send millions if not billions of litres of wasted water and expensive nutrients ou to sea annually, when instead we could pipe it inland to help struggling farmers and rural communities, not just survive, but prosper! And with a range of products that fetch a tidy profit including the wasted water! And it's that same profit component and improved prosperity that makes all the above doable

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago!

Throwing millions around like a drunken sailor as charity food on farmers' tables may buy a few votes, but addresses nothing else!

When the same money could be invested in the above to give us a stable and totally independent fuel supply and farmers who can all but guarantee their income for the term of their natural lives!

You don't want!?

Don't just do something, stand there!
Alan B.

Some algae are up to 60% oil!

Double their bodyweight and oil content, every 24 hours under optimised conditions! So the million tons you have today?

two million tons tomorrow and four million the day after! This time next year? Our total fuel needs as we harvest that not required as seed stock?

Algae are one of the few things that grow during extended droughts and could be grown on rubbish land in clear plastic pipes as an endlessly reliable endlessly sustainable and as reliable as the sunrise as a cash crop that only requires1-3% of the water of traditional irrigation.

While ever we depend on Middle East oil for our fuel we are all but defenceless and ale to be compromised!

And have no self-defence security! Algae naturally sequester carbon!

And produce ready to use fuel after minimal treatment that's tailor-made for rural enterprise! And able to supply a domestic market with a healthy mark up at just 44 cents per litre! Produces a better quality of clear less polluting, better lubricating fuels! AND TOTAL SELF SUFFICIENCY ON THOSE FARMS PRODUCING IT!

And as simple as filtering out some of the algae via a rotating filter, sun-drying and then crushing it to remove a ready to use oil content, even as w draw down some of the CO2 content of the atmosphere in a win-win outcome for the fam the nation and the environment!

Need any other reasons for determined inaction? Or still sitting on the hands and accepting the smiling assassin/insane, status quo!?
Alan B.

Alan B,
What is the main rejection argument when you put these ideas to those who'd be in a position to actually contemplate these alternatives but won't ?