The glass is half full?
Although the headline said,
“Boeing plans to build military drones in regional Queensland”?
And the ABC report said,
“ The site at the Wellcamp Aerospace and Defence Precinct would be the final assembly point for the Loyal Wingman planes, with the project subject to defence orders.”
Reading the usual list of yet to be decided factors the glass may be half full of something other than pure optimism.
An article regarding Australia facing fertilizer shortages.
Cairns had an ACF & Shirleys fertilizer factory untill a few decades ago.
They burned sulphur to make sulphuric acid to make superphosphate.
They had their own wharf known as the fertilizer wharf and we would collect materials spilled on it to make explosives when we were in high school.
And Australia has large phosphate deposits.
But here we are once again being subjected to Chinese restrictions.
China’s reserves are not huge and they are ripping through them at a great rate. Assuming no more is found and the rate of production is constant they will run out in about 30 years. For a country with a huge population to feed restricting exports seems reasonable to me.
That’s right and there is something called peak phosphorus. High yield agricultural protection generally requires the application of phosphorus and it is likely that the Chinese are securing their own resources to meet/protect their own agricultural sector.
Another potential source of phosphorus is phosphorus from waste water treatment plants. There has been work done in the past in how to recover phosphorus from such plants, but to date, there hasn’t been any successful methods other than direct soil application of biosolids.
Aside from the economics of it reclaiming anything from waste water requires a change of attitude; it needs to become a resource not something useless to send out to sea.
France and the EU continue their dummy spit.
Perhaps they should read these satistics first.
“In 2017-18, goods imports from France were valued at A$5.1 billion, and Australian goods exports to France at A$1.6 billion. Australia’s services imports from France were $2.3 billion and Australia’s services exports to France were $931 million.”
“Australia has a significant two-way goods trade relationship with the European Union 28 (EU), with exports valued at $20.3 billion in 2016 (7.8 per cent share of total Australian goods exports) and imports valued at $49.0 billion (18.3 per cent of total goods imports)1 Australia recorded a net goods trade deficit with the EU valued at $28.7 billion in 2016.”
Or they can just shoot themselves in both feet.
'We must continue to have refineries here in Australia. It is all very well to say the economies of scale don’t justify it. Economies of scale don’t count in a war time situation or in a situation where a certain country can attempt to hold us to ransom. Economic theory is just that: theory. Economic rationalism was all the thing years ago but not heard of for years. Just-in-time was always ridiculous. It relied on everyone in the product pipeline doing all the right things and raw materials being readily available. Covid has proven JIT to be useless.
If we do that the seaborne supply chain of crude oil is just as vulnerable as if it is supplying refined products. So as things stand neither small reserves of refined products or of crude provide energy security.
To have secure energy supply we can use petroleum (for as long as it lasts) if we have much bigger local reserve storage or we can cut our reliance on petroleum for energy. The latter seems more sensible to me for many reasons.
Australia is supplying 60% of the world’s lithium.
Independent of the discussion on what is best for Australia’s economic future and industry, the products produced OS are being sold on to mostly anywhere but Australia.
It’s worth noting the EU has introduced a carbon border tariff to protect local higher cost lower carbon manufacturing from unfair competition as they transition to achieve their GHG reduction targets.
