Crude truth is a shaky future


REMEMBER when the dollar cost of filling up the family car was less than the number of litres of fuel you pumped?
Those days are long gone.
Although petrol prices are expected to drop in the short term - John Howard predicts they will fall to as low as $1.15 - in the long term they will continue to rise.
Not because of Middle East conflict or rising oil demand in China or India - although those factors affect prices - but because of diminishing crude oil supplies.
Experts differ on when exactly the world's crude oil supply will run dry, and some deny they will ever run out.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which is made up of 11 oil-producing and exporting countries, generates 78 per cent of the world's crude oil.
Australians rely on these supplies to get to work every day.
OPEC says oil is a "limited resource" and "may eventually run out".
BP's latest analysis predicts there are only 40 years to oil dry.
Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is already preparing for the day some time next decade when its domestic crude oil reserves are finally depleted, by building the world's three largest artificial islands off the Dubai coast.
The Palm Islands were designed as part of a plan to develop tourism in Dubai so the emirate's economy doesn't suffer too much when the oil reserves run out.
Will Sydneysiders have to rely on the state's dilapidated transport system to get around? Hopefully not.
There are plenty of experts researching alternatives to crude oil.
As petrol prices continue to increase, hitting hip pockets everywhere, calls for the Federal Government to do something about it have reached fever pitch.
Even some of the Prime Minister's own backbenchers - Wilson Tuckey, Fiona Nash, Kay Hull and Jackie Kelly - want the Government to look at alternative fuels. Now.
Tuckey, a West Australian MP, believes hydrogen is the answer.
"I'm significantly disappointed with our Government," Tuckey told The Daily Telegraph.
"The Government and its energy department are carbon-centric and they are not doing sufficient work in Australia to equip future generations with an alternative fuel."
CSIRO chief research scientist Dr Sukhvindar Badwal agrees and has researched new ways to power cars because "we are running short of liquid fuel".
Badwal has developed a device that can run on mains power or from a solar panel that generates hydrogen from water and could power a family car for up to 150km.
While he doesn't think the world will ever run out of oil, he does believe prices will rise.
"There will be substantial reduction in the production of oil," he said.
"We have to find alternative sources of fuel. Petrol prices will keep on going up and up."
While hydrogen-powered fuel cells might be 15-20 years away, there is one alternative fuel that is at Australia's fingertips right now: Ethanol.
Ethanol is produced from sugar cane and is available at selected petrol stations across the country.
While Australian petrol blends don't contain any more than 10 per cent ethanol the University of Sydney's Professor Rolf Prince believes this can be pushed to 20 per cent before it starts affecting mileage.
Prince, from the university's department of chemical engineering, said delivering more ethanol to the petrol pumps would "help stabilise Australia's sugar industry".
"I'd like to see a substantial broadening of ethanol, it would be good for our agricultural industries," he said.
You can practically hear Queensland's beleaguered sugar farmers cheering. The problem is, ethanol production requires a great deal of land to grow the crops.
As such, Prince says only 10-30 per cent of Australia's fuel requirements can ever be produced by ethanol.
"It's difficult to really rely on it for the bulk but it would give us a safeguard for essentials," he says.
By 2010, Caltex, Shell and BP aim to lift bio-fuel consumption to 350 million litres.
NSW Nationals Senator Fiona Nash is concerned they won't meet the targets and has called on the Government to mandate targets.
"It's the oil company's refusal to get ethanol out in the marketplace that is not allowing people to have access to that benefit," she told The Daily Telegraph.
A spokesman for BP said yesterday the oil company was doing more than its share by committing to produce 200 million litres of bio-fuels by 2008.
Natural gas and electricity are two other fuel sources for cars but the electric car suffered a premature death several years ago.
Chris Paine last week appeared on a US talk show to discuss his documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?
When electric cars were built in California Paine bought one to see what it was like.
The car could be plugged into the home garage.
When he took the car in to get a new brake light and called the car manufacturer to find out if repairs were completed, he was told: "We took it back."
In fact, the manufacturer took all the cars back.
Chartering a helicopter, Mr Paine flew over General Motors headquarters in Arizona and saw the cars being crushed in the desert.
As fuel prices continue to climb to record highs, the time for quashing fuel alternatives is over.

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