Albanese says more refineries needed in wake of Geelong fire, foreign interference ruled out as cause

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Australia needs more fuel refineries, a day on from a fire at one of the two left in Australia that has limited production during the ongoing fuel crisis.

The government has also ruled out foreign interference as the cause of the fire Viva Energy’s oil refinery at Corio, near Geelong, which exploded into flames on Wednesday night and burnt into Thursday.

Albanese visited the damaged refinery on Friday morning with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

“There were six refineries in Australia when we left office in 2013, and when we came back [in 2022] there were two. That was an error,” Albanese said. He pointed to government interventions in South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania to protect critical manufacturing industries.

On Thursday at the Viva site, Australian Workers’ Union state branch president Ross Kenna urged the federal government to “start taking fuel security seriously”, including by investing in the remaining facilities.

“Once you lose sovereign capacity, it’s hard to rebuild,” Kenna said.

“We are an island nation, we can do this ourselves, we have the capacity if we have the investment. So we do need to invest in these facilities, and make sure we hold multinationals to account.”

The fire, which took 13 hours and 100 firefighters to extinguish, has forced Viva Energy to reduce its production of some fuels while investigations continue into the cause of the blaze and the extent of the damage.

Production at the plant has slowed to 80 per cent capacity for diesel, 80 per cent for aviation fuel and 60 per cent for vehicle fuel as investigations into the fire continue.

The timing couldn’t be worse: Viva’s refinery, one of only two of its kind remaining in Australia, had been at full production capacity since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28, and was producing up to 120,000 barrels of oil per day.

Marles said foreign interference had been ruled out as the cause of the fire. “All of that, I think, has been ruled out,” he said. “I mean, obviously all the investigations are ongoing, but that’s not what anyone thinks has happened here.”

Albanese also said the fire wouldn’t move Australia to the third stage of its national fuel security plan, which would prompt the adoption of practical measures limiting fuel use.

“The event here will not lead to any change,” he said. “We’ll give an update tomorrow [Saturday] about fuel supplies that are on hand. Fuel is continuing to come in.”

Albanese said the fire was “regrettable” considering its timing, but most fuel production continued despite the incident.

“The advice that we’ve received today is that 80 per cent of diesel production is continuing, 80 per cent of aviation fuel is continuing. It’s been slowed down just slightly because of the circumstances which in there, but 60 per cent of petrol production is proceeding,” Albanese said.

There are hopes the refinery can “ramp up” production following the fire.

It is understood the blaze began in some piping in the plant due to a mechanical fault, and despite emitting a large amount of smoke, was eventually contained an area of 50 square metres. Albanese thanked emergency workers during his visit.

On Friday morning, Fire Rescue Victoria crews remained on standby at the scene, while a HAZMAT team was still conducting air monitoring around the perimeter.

Viva chief executive Scott Wyatt hoped the Corio facility could be back at full production by the end of the weekend. “I think there will be no impact to what we supply to the Victorian market as a result of this incident,” he said.

Wyatt also responded to speculation that a lack of maintenance was responsible for the fire.

“We’ve run this facility for over 70 years, it requires regular maintenance and it has had regular upgrades through that time,” he said. “This plant constantly requires nurturing and we do that regularly.”

To visit the Viva refinery, Albanese cut short a trip to Brunei and Malaysia aimed at securing more fuel shipments.

An extra 100 million litres of fuel will arrive in Australia as a result of that visit, and Marles said that would largely offset the temporary reduction in output at Viva.

Albanese visited Singapore last week for the same reason.