China has been buying up oilfields around the world for some time.
The first thing to understand in this discussion is;
OIL WILL NEVER RUN OUT !

However a country that imports 95% of its oil and diesel is very vulnerable.
Conventional oil fields peaked in 2005.
This caused a rush to unconventional oil such as tight shale rock oil.
This what has happened in the US, and it gave the world a five year to
ten year breathing space to tackle the problem of expensive oil.

Unfortunately we did not take the hint.
The production decline rate of tight oil is 40% to 60% the first year
and 95% in the 5th year.
The cost of tight oil is rising and drilling finance is starting to
get very twitchy about the lack of profitability.
The ERoEI of tight oil is around 5 as compared to conventional oil
of ERoEI of 50 or 100 to 1 ratio.

The major oil companies need to spend $2 Trillion over the next
couple of years in an attempt to just replace production falls in
conventional fields. Their yield on this search and development
expenditure has fallen so that much higher oil prices are inevitable.

There is much hype about the US becoming self sufficient in oil but
this is impossible. The US imports 40% of the oil they use and the
tight oil is about just 3 million barrels a day of the 18MBD that they
use.

While what happens in the US directly affects us our problem is the
risk to our supply. If the ISIL gets control or damages the loading
terminals in Iraq, that could cut off the world's second largest exporter.

Almost all our petrol and diesel comes from Singapore’s refinery.
It does not take much imagination to see scenarios that could cause
a cessation in supply to Australia.

Ome huge dilemma many countries now face is that they are so much in debt, that they need to see every drop to the highest bidder, simply to keep the wheels turning.

Australia is not imuned to this, even though we domt export oil as such.

Rehctub, Soon, when the remaining refineries close, we will import 100%
of our fuel and the governments, state and federal are not concerned
that there could be a problem.
I have asked pollies about this and have been assured that there is no
significant risk, anyway they say we have firm commercial arrangements.

Doesn't that boost your confidence ?
We do have lots of coal seam gas that we could stop from being exported
but as far as I have been able to determine we could not get it out of
the ground fast enough to run everything to say nothing about the cost
and time needed to convert everything over to compressed natural gas.

When I have pressed the pollies on questions like this I am told that
the Liquid Fuels Emergency Act will look after it.
Yeah !

Yes Bazz which brings me back to my comment, that our gas can't be kept here because we rely on the revenue just to keep the wheels turning as out out dated tax system is no longer adequate and simply can not provide enough income.

Surely though we should be able to keep enough gas for ourselves.

I know you have spoken about energy prices for years and in my opinion you are on the money as there is little doubt they will have a huge influence on the way the world does business.

Back in the late 70's fuel was 19c/lt. So in 37 years it has doubled more than three times. Should it double another three times, that would mean by 2051 it may cost $41 per litre. That's a worry!

What do you think the wars that Australia and the U.S.A. have been conducting for decades in the Middle East are all about? Keeping a stranglehold on oil supplies.
Australia could easily be self-sufficient in oil and gas if we hung onto it and didn’t export it to the rest of the world. Our politicians are just stupid, like the people who elected them. Food and water are going to run short before oil, yet we’re happily destroying our most fertile land and poisoning the water table to collect gas to export to the rest of the world. And that’s called smart practice. Boy are we the dumb country or what?

Sorry ybgirp, you have got it so wrong.
We do not export oil at all, we import 95% of our liquid fuels.
The oil we produce is 40% of our consumption.
Australuan oil production is in terminal decline and at some point
will become uneconomic and will then be shut down.
It is now too low to make the refineries economic. They are closing.
So we export the oil to Singapore and maybe some other refineries and
import petrol & diesel from Singapore, 95% of our usage..
I have always doubted the theory that the Iraq war was to obtain oil.
Iraq was very happy to sell it onto the world market much cheaper than
funding a war to get it even for nothing.
Another factor is that the US gets only a small part of its oil from
the Middle East. Most of its import supply, about 10 million barrels
a day comes from Africa and a scattering of other sources.

As far as natural gas is concerned I think it is a major mistake to
export any of it as we will need it soon to convert all trucks, trains
cars and ships to CNG. Otherwise we will be paying big money for petrol & diesel.