Random Notes  

As any well trained economist could predict, new innovations are occurring due to high petrol prices - notably in the art of petrol stealing, with today's Herald reporting on a "Petrol theft case: giant fuel tank found in van".

The days of centralised wage bargaining here are just about gone (and for some of us they never existed at all) - but it seems right that petrol will be one of the factors included in the ACTU wage claim.

The NRMA is still trying to get the Federal Government to show up to a summit on petrol prices.

Australia's largest motoring organisation has urged the federal government to join its emergency summit this week to try to rein in the inflationary impact of skyrocketing fuel costs. NRMA director Gary Punch says the entire country is already being affected because of the multiplier effect of price hikes and the federal government must contribute to the debate.

"Things are desperate," he said. "The road transport industries are already saying exorbitant petrol prices are going to flow through to groceries and supermarket shelves. You are going to feel it at the grocery counter, you're going to feel it at the store where you buy general merchandise, and you're going to feel it in your general services charges. This is going to have a major inflationary impact on our community and it's hurting the people who can afford it the least."

As one of the perks of being a federal politician is a government car plus chauffeur most of them may not have noticed, having been distrated by all the kerfuffle over Mr Latham's diaries. I've never voted Labor but I quite liked Iron Mark towards the end of his career and I'm probably one of the few who thoroughly approves of his trashing of all and sundry. His thoughts on the US alliance are pretty worthy at the least.

Australia should follow the example of New Zealand which had made itself the safest country on earth through distancing itself from the United States, former opposition leader Mark Latham said.

Speaking ahead of the long-awaited launch of his diary, Mr Latham said he reached the conclusion that Australia needed to renegotiate the alliance with the US after dining with then US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer, who he referred to in his diary as Brains ("Schieffer brains").

"We should have a look at how New Zealand has made itself the safest country in the world," he told ABC radio. "There is no terrorist threat to New Zealand that has been identified but (there is) one here. If you go supporting bad American policy you make yourself a bigger target and you stir dissent in your own country," he said. "If the Americans continue with Bush's policies they will never win the war against terror. They are bogged down in this for the rest of our lifetime.

"If Iraq is an example of how they are going about their work, they are never going to win that. They are just going to maximise dissent and aggression against them and nations that join in bad foreign policy as a neo-colonial partner of the US are obviously going to run into a lot of strife.

Labor has slightly redeemed itself by trying to mitigate our "Patriot Act Lite" abandonment of traditional freedoms, by trying to force the inclusion of a sunset clause in the new "detention without charge" proposals.

Moving back to oil related news, the Herald has a report on rising Australian oil exports (which ignores the fact that we are a net oil importer).

Soaring demand will push up Australian oil exports to $9 billion this financial year, the nation's chief commodities forecaster said.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, in its latest commodities report, said crude oil production in Australia would grow seven per cent to 26.1 gigalitres. Of that, around 18 gigalitres will be sent to overseas markets, reaping $9 billion - an increase of 43 per cent.

But in a sign of the falling levels of oil production in Australia, total exports will be 25 per cent lower than they were at the start of the century when 24 gigalitres of oil were overseas. The bureau said this year's increase in production would come from key West Australian fields.

"This forecast increase largely reflects the ramping up of production from the Mutineer/Exeter field and smaller contributions from the Basker and Manter and Cliff Head developments in the second half of 2005-06," it said. "With close proximity to Asian markets, it is assumed that additional production from Mutineer/Exeter and Cliff Head will be exported, while production from Basker and Manter (Gippsland basin) is assumed to be consumed domestically."

The bureau is tipping the world trade weighted average price of oil to come back from the current $US63 a barrel to a shade under $US52 a barrel.

One energy source we do have a large trade surplus in is coal, with revenue continuing to soar.

The natural gas pipeline from Papua New guinea continues to get closer to be a reality, with aluminium producer Comalco being the latest to sign up.

Participants in the $US3 billion-plus ($A3.94 billion) Papua New Guinea-Australia gas pipeline project have struck an agreement with Comalco Ltd to sell it gas for use at facilities at Gladstone and Weipa in Queensland.

A conditional agreement reached with the aluminium producer covers the direct sale of 14 to 50.5 petajoules per annum over 20 years and supercedes a deal with Energex announced in July 2003, under which gas was on sold to Comalco.

ExxonMobil Corp, whose subsidiary Esso Highlands Ltd operates the PNG gas project's facilities and infrastructure in PNG and markets the gas in Australia, said the new agreement did not involve any new volumes of gas. But ExxonMobil said the PNG gas project was pleased that Comalco had committed to taking a substantial quantity of natural gas.

India has announced plans to build an oil refinery in Nigeria.

China is going to spend US$240 billion on rail projects by 2015. Rail projects here are few and far between - the Greens in NSW are fighting to keep one disused rail corridor reserved for future rail transport rather than having it parcelled up for property development.

In a rather black piece of irony fuel shortages are restricting UN food airdrops to people in southern Sudan, who have been displaced in the ongoing civil (oil) war. Further south, shortages of diesel are biting in Uganda. Zambia is also suffering diesel shortages.