The Viva Refinery Fire as a Measure of National Energy Supply Fragility

In a country already running on fumes, a refinery fire does not need a villain in a black cape to feel sinister. The public mind goes there because that is what happens when too much national continuity is balanced on too few industrial pressure points, and everyone knows it, however politely they pretend otherwise. We are understandably sensitive to this now, and it may prove to be nothing more than grim coincidence that it happened in the middle of a wider global energy shock. Hard to say. But that sensitivity is not irrational. It is what happens when the margin for error has become embarrassingly thin, and when the distance between routine operation and public consequence is roughly the width of a corporate reassurance.

So the serious question is not whether to indulge every dark little theory drifting through the air, but whether a company carrying this much practical responsibility was operating with the degree of discipline the moment demands. Reuters reports that the fire struck Viva Energy’s motor gasoline production unit at the Geelong refinery, that petrol production may be affected more than diesel or aviation fuel, that other units were cut to minimum rates for safety, and that this single site supplies more than half of Victoria’s fuel needs and about 10% of Australia’s total fuel demand. No injuries were reported at that stage, and the extent of the damage was not yet clear. That, unfortunately, is the point. When one site carries that much weight, “not yet clear” is not a reassuring phrase. One assumes the people responsible for investigating such things are moving with some momentum of their own, because when infrastructure this important catches fire, delay stops looking procedural and starts looking like farce.