This article hypothesises that Australia's long-term and short-term liquid fuel security will not be improved by the exploitation of petroleum resources in the frontier Great Australian Bight (GAB) basin. This analysis demonstrates that significant challenges arise regarding Australia's energy policy which promotes the development of the GAB, due to corporate imperatives, global economic conditions, and localised challenges such as depth, distance, and prevailing weather. Furthermore, the closure of over half of Australia's refineries has placed structural demands on Australian refinery capacity. Therefore, even if oil were to be found in the GAB and developed, Australia's current policy approaches to downstream refining capacity mean that any oil discovered would likely be exported. Short term, such policy frameworks would cause a significant deficit in Australia's International Energy Agency (IEA) stockpile capacity, requiring the leasing of oil stocks from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to meet IEA demands. Given these insecurities, this article postulates that Australia's energy security policy, and particularly its liquid fuel security policy, should be revisited, revised, and reformed to ensure liquid fuel security for all sectors of the economy.

本文假设澳大利亚的长期和短期液体燃料安全不会因大澳大利亚湾 (GAB) 边境盆地的石油资源开发而得到改善。该分析表明，由于企业需求、全球经济状况以及深度、距离和主要天气等局部挑战，澳大利亚促进 GAB 发展的能源政策面临重大挑战。此外，澳大利亚一半以上炼油厂的关闭对澳大利亚炼油厂的产能提出了结构性需求。因此，即使在 GAB 中发现并开发了石油，澳大利亚目前对下游炼油能力的政策方法意味着任何发现的石油都可能被出口。短期，此类政策框架将导致澳大利亚国际能源署 (IEA) 的库存能力严重不足，需要从美国战略石油储备中租赁石油库存以满足 IEA 的需求。鉴于这些不安全因素，本文假设澳大利亚的能源安全政策，尤其是液体燃料安全政策，应该重新审视、修订和改革，以确保所有经济部门的液体燃料安全。