Viewpoint - 13 May 2002

Harry Robinson returns pointing out that we can turn our subterranean environment to our advantage if we have the wit and the will to do so.
________________

In the Australian mind lies a niggling suspicion that the gods short-changed us when they put us on this dry continent at the bottom of Asia. Sure, they gave us space aplenty and they gave us a protective ocean all the way round the coast. But they withheld copious rain and they let us have precious little arable land. Really arable, fertile. They did not give us anything like their biggest gift to the US--the Mississippi Basin. The soils, rain and rivers in that rich sweep of territory underpin American might. Dry it up and make it like inland Australia and Uncle Sam would be a very ordinary guy.

Hard scrabble is the way we profile our big island.

Well, let us adjust the profile. We can be pretty rich if we put our minds to it. Minds, with a minimum of  muscle.

The transforming force came out in a recent edition of Terry Lane's In the National Interest  (ABC's Radio National, Sundays a few minutes after noon.)  It's usually a sober  show concerned with the way things ought to be. And when he introduced Dr Adrian Williams, the CSIRO's  Petroleum Chief, the prospects were less than thrilling.

But but but, within a minute Williams was spilling beans. Yes, he was on the phone from a vineyard lunch, yes it was true that Australia at present is a net oil exporter but within ten years we would be down to 50% self sufficiency. And then we would be importing oil in great dollops. Curiously, Williams was upbeat and cheerful where he should have been glum. He had good news. In brief point form he said:

• Australia  has huge resources of natural gas, in fact we are one of the gas-rich countries of the world. Enough for 100 years.
   

• Technology exists to convert the gas into liquid transport fuel. Costs are still on the high side but can be reduced. The resulting fuel -- "like clean diesel" -- is at least 30% more efficient than gasoline and it's cleaner. "Environmentally attractive" was the Williams phrase. No particulates, no sulphurs, no smog.

In addition, we have some of the hottest rocks on earth, or in the earth. By driving down 3,500 to 5,000 metres through fissures in granite layers of Central and South Australia we can extract enough heat to turn into steam to turn into electricity to drive Australia for 800 years. A closed system, the technique would be clean as clean can be.

• Several companies were already surveying the sites and drilling could begin this year.

There was more but those are the  punch lines which indicate an entire makeover of our notional profile.  The gods were not so mean after all. They gave us the wherewithal to become a colossal power house. And one where the fuel sources are all on our home ground. No need to import. The US dependence on oil imports plays the devil with US foreign policies.

Again but but but. All that marvellous gas and heat has to be extracted from the ground, converted, distributed and so on and so on. We've got the challenge in front of us. We can write two scenarios.

One: happy-go-lucky Australians let the stuff sit there while they think about exploitation at their leisure. While they are day dreaming, entrepreneurs from America and Asia move in, take out leases, supply know-how, go into commercial  manoeuvres, snaffle the best bits while the happy-go-luckies sit back and make do with royalties and resource rentals. They grizzle about globalisation.

Two:  those same Australians can wake up now, boost their science education to supply the minds to survey, analyse, maximise harvests, design conversion plants... there's no end to the demands for scientifically educated people. While they are at it, the same Australians should demand from their universities a supply of graduates who can safeguard the property rights, devise the finance, draft the laws to keep ownership and operations in Australian hands. It's a 50 year job with immense promise.

It is no use looking to parliaments or traditional parties to suddenly spring into action on the education/science front. They are mired in the past and in current stoushes. "Where will the money come from?" will be their wail. The inspiration and the drive will have to come from educators, scientists and adventurous  business people.

There is still a hitch. The gods were mean about water. We might have all the energy we need but we must have more water.  Surely there's a scientist hiding in a laboratory working on a substitute for the H₂0 molecule?
 

Harry Robinson who for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and who was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.