Energy Minister Angus Taylor has announced that the government is negotiating to buy millions of barrels of oil from America's fuel reserve under an emergency strategy to lower the risk of Australia plunging into an economic and national security crisis.

What he is trying to do is to meet our obligations as a member country of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which requires us to hold 90 days of net import of fuel and oil. We are the only member country that does not meet our obligation.

However, this obligation does not mean we would actually hold 90 days of diesel and 90 days of unleaded and 90 days of jet fuel. The 90-day figure is just an accounting measure. In reality we currently have about 21 days of diesel stocks (but it has been as low as 12 days in the past three years.)

Will this "deal" make any real difference to our own energy security, given that we import more than 90 per cent of all our transport fuels as either oil or refined product? Will it mean there is significantly less risk for Australians running out of fuel in days, or weeks, in the event of a supply disruption?

Unfortunately, it will not. What we are seeing here is marketing instead of real action and a clever accounting move to avoid having to address our real fuel security problem.