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Whatsapp An oil tanker lies moored in Botany Bay off the coast of the Caltex oil refinery which supplies nearly all of the city's petrol, oil and diesel needs.

Australia is the ninth largest energy producer in the world but would run out of petrol in just three weeks if imports were interrupted. A new report claims Australia's fuel supply is a national security issue and urges the government to save the oil refining industry, writes Alex McClintock.

Australia has never been so energy insecure and will be completely dependent on overseas fuel by 2030, a report has found.

In Sydney alone there are 25,000 truck trips a week that do our food supply. If you turn that supply off, it's not a matter of having to import some product, your way of life stops. It's fundamental, it's like air.

Australia's Fuel Security, commissioned by the NRMA last year, found that Australia imports 91 per cent of its fuel, up from around 60 per cent in 2000.

'Fuel actually underpins our economy and our way of life,' the report's author, retired Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn, told RN Breakfast.

'In Sydney alone there are 25,000 truck trips a week that do our food supply. If you turn that supply off, it's not a matter of having to import some product, your way of life stops. It's fundamental, it's like air.'

'Without fuel, we don't survive.'

The calls come after Swiss oil trading group Vitol stepped in at the 11th hour to buy Shell's Geelong refinery for $2.9 billion last week.

Twenty-eight per cent of the refining industry is set to close by the end of this year, according to Blackburn. The former deputy head of the RAAF also accused previous reviews of energy security of being purely economic.

'This is a national security, a national survival issue in the longer term,' he said.

'When you look at the rest of the supply chain, nobody's looked at regional conflict, for example: if there was a regional problem that could affect shipping or trade. No-one's looked at the vulnerability of our supply chain.'

'Whilst it makes economic sense to let the markets do it, there's a security piece here. So we have an economic plan without security which is as bad, frankly, as a security plan that's not affordable. We need to find somewhere in the middle.'

The government brought forward the energy white paper from 2015 to this year, said Blackburn, which meant that there would be no time for an energy security assessment to be included.

He urged the government to consider dropping barriers to the adoption of gas as vehicle fuel and to work with the refining industry to retain capacity in Australia.

'Before it disappears, let's have a serious look at how we make the refining industry in Australia viable,' he said.

'The only country in the international energy agency ... without refining capacity is Luxembourg.'