BY MATT CANAVAN
CANBERRA, ACT. —In 2017, Australia faced a severe shortage of gas. Nothing as serious as the petrol and diesel crisis of today, but a serious problem nonetheless.
As Resources Minister, I sat down with one of my top geologists and asked him a straight question. “Where is the best place to drill for gas in Australia?” Without hesitation or irony — geologists are matter-of-fact people — he replied, “The Great Barrier Reef”.
I nearly spat out my Weet-Bix. Once, regaining my composure, I said “You will never say that again.”
We don’t need to take such radical action to guarantee our liquid fuel security, though an example near the reef shows what we can do.
About a decade ago, I visited a refinery in Gladstone, just a stone’s throw from the Great Barrier Reef. There, a company called Queensland Energy Resources was producing jet fuel from the surrounding onshore shales. These shales are full of hydrocarbons (a fancy word for oil and gas). So you can dig them up, crush them, heat them up, and like magic, you can run a car, a tractor or even a jet engine with them. The pilot worked. The technology is off-the-shelf.
However, it is an expensive form of oil production compared with the sweet crudes abundant in the Arabian Peninsula. Now that oil prices are skyrocketing, we need to investigate whether we can ramp up shale oil production.
We should also look at biofuels and coal-to-liquids options, too.
Things could get dire fast. We may, within weeks, have to decide who gets petrol and diesel and who doesn’t. It may mean that commuting and holidaying are locked down just like they were in Covid.
That will be an inconvenience for the rich who may be looking forward to a European summer holiday. But is is from the rich class that we have had to suffer through lectures about the evils of fossil fuels over recent years.
I am not going to cop lectures from the ABC — and other left-wing media — that we have not done enough to secure our petrol and diesel supplies. I, and my colleagues in the National and Liberal parties, have fought for years to drill, baby, drill. But every step of the way, we have been frustrated by a cabal of Labor environmental groups, overseas-funded campaign outfits and an activist left-wing media.
Our lack of fuel security is a choice we have made to prioritise net zero over the basic essentials of life.
Green ideology is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Matt Canavan is the Leader of the National Party.
This article was originally published in the Herald Sun as “Let’s drill down on this crisis,” Friday, March 20, 2026, p.57.
