With regards to bullies, they don’t come a lot greater than ExxonMobil, who simply took goal on the Victorian authorities for daring to consider supporting Victorian households with the ballooning price of fuel heating and scorching water, together with serving to fund using electrical home equipment as a substitute.
The inconvenient fact for ExxonMobil is that not solely is their product making individuals and our planet sick, Victorians are shortly realising it’s additionally burning a gap in our wallets. To warmth our properties and scorching water, electrical energy is now cheaper than fuel, and as coal is changed within the grid with Victoria’s plentiful photo voltaic and wind sources, it’s additionally cleaner.
Exxon Australia has warned the Victorian authorities about strikes to cut back fuel use.Credit score:Bloomberg
ExxonMobil is the corporate that introduced the world the Valdez oil spill. They have been discovered by a royal fee to be liable for the Longford fuel explosion that killed two Victorians regardless of the corporate attempting guilty its employees for the tragedy. They’ve a observe file of placing their backside line forward of the pursuits of extraordinary individuals.
In a speech to the Australian Home Fuel Outlook convention this week, Exxon Australia industrial director David Berman appeared to launch a preemptive assault on the Andrews authorities’s Fuel Substitution Roadmap, a vitally essential coverage for business and shoppers, which remains to be in its public session stage. He recommended that if the Andrews authorities helps Victoria shift away from fuel, ExxonMobil would query additional investments within the state.
“The [Roadmap] is the one largest risk to near-term fuel provide for the 80 per cent of Victorian households that depend on fuel for heating, scorching water and cooking,” he stated.
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Let’s simply step out this logic. By supporting households and companies to switch outdated fuel home equipment with environment friendly new electrical ones, the Roadmap would lead to Victoria utilizing much less fuel. In retaliation, ExxonMobil would possibly rethink its plans to extend manufacturing from present fuel fields within the Gippsland Basin. This may threaten a short-term fuel provide crunch, which ExxonMobil seems to be utilizing as leverage to affect authorities coverage.
That is appalling company behaviour and ExxonMobil needs to be publicly known as out for it.
The fact is that fuel costs have been on the rise for years, and with the present sanctions on Russian fuel and decreased provide from Bass Strait, they’re solely going up. For electrical energy, it’s the other. The newest worth pattern report from the Australian Vitality Market Fee discovered an inflow of renewables and battery storage is predicted to cut back wholesale electrical energy costs by round 39 per cent in Victoria by 2024.