Imports surge as local oil dries up

AUSTRALIA'S dependence on imported oil surged in the past year as local crude production slumped by a further 10 per cent.
The latest figures mean that the nation's production has plunged by 44 per cent in the past six years.
Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Belinda Robinson said the continuing decline highlighted the need for Australia to encourage exploration in areas away from existing oil and gas production fields.
"We're producing 60 to 65 per cent of what we consume - it used to be 80 to 90 per cent," Ms Robinson said.
"We do have very large, unexplored areas of Australia and we still don't know the extent of the reserves we have.
"The finds are fewer and smaller, and that is primarily because exploration tends to be confined to the known areas."
Figures issued yesterday by APPEA on natural field decline and the effect of cyclones show that crude oil production in the past financial year fell from 126.3 million barrels to 113.3 million barrels.
Condensate (light oil) output grew slightly from 44.7 million barrels to 45.9 million barrels, while LNG production soared nearly 16 per cent to 569.6 million cubic feet.
This was the result of shipments beginning from the ConocoPhillips Darwin LNG project and the ramp up of train four on the Woodside-operated North West Shelf gas project.
APPEA said LPG output was up 3.3 per cent to 27 million barrels while domestic gas production rose only marginally from 768.6 million cubic feet to 780.5 million cubic feet.
Oil production in 2005-06 was affected by continual decline in output from the Bass Strait fields, once Australia's biggest producers, only partially offset by the commissioning of the Basker-Manta development.
Other issues included problems with the Laminaria-Corallina fields in the Timor Sea and the shutdown of a number of operations on the North West Shelf as a result of greater-than-anticipated cyclone activity.
The most recent developments were discovered decades ago and have only been commercialised because of high world oil prices.
But in the next two years, new fields found earlier this decade on the North West Shelf, such as Vincent and Stybarrow, will come into production at a total of more than 150,000 barrels a day, arresting for a short time the natural decline in Australian oil field production.
Since the end of the financial year, Woodside has brought into production the Enfield development, which is ramping up towards planned daily output of 100,000 barrels.
The decline in 2005-06 oil output coincides with the release of Australian government statistics which show that for the first five months of the calendar year, demand for petrol fell.
Figures show petrol consumption peaked at 1655.1 million litres in March.
While a price surge in April, coinciding with fears about the global impact of Iran's nuclear program, reduced consumption to 1516.7 million litres, sales in May recovered slightly to 1556.8 million litres.