The supply-side context behind the numbers: the Strait of Hormuz, where our fuel is imported from, the national fuel security policy framework, the government package, fuel-standard changes, and the historical oil shocks we read against.
The world's most important oil chokepoint, and why its closure on 28 February 2026 triggered this crisis. Transit has since partially resumed but remains contested. This is the full explainer, absorbed from /fuel-supply where only a two-sentence summary now appears.
The Strait of Hormuz sits between Iran and Oman, connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It is the only sea route for oil exports from Kuwait and Qatar. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pipelines that partly bypass the strait (the EIA and IEA put spare bypass capacity at roughly 2.6 to 5.5 million barrels a day, against normal Hormuz flows of about 20 million), and Iraq has a small route via Turkey's Ceyhan port. The strait normally carries roughly 20 million barrels a day of crude and refined products, about a fifth of world oil consumption and a quarter of seaborne oil trade, so its closure took a large slice of globally traded supply off the market.
For Australia, the direct impact is the loss of Middle Eastern crude that fed Asian refineries (particularly in Singapore and South Korea) which in turn supplied us with refined fuel. The indirect impact is arguably worse: global competition for the remaining supply has driven prices up for everyone. European buyers, previously supplied via the Suez Canal route, are now competing with Asian buyers for Atlantic Basin crude (from Nigeria, Angola, and the Americas), pushing prices higher across all markets.
Australia's Fuel Security Act 2021 was supposed to address exactly this scenario. It established the Minimum Stockholding Obligation requiring fuel entities to hold minimum stock levels. But the MSO's importer floors were set low: 27 days of petrol and 32 of diesel (24 and 20 for refiners), well below the IEA's 90-day recommendation. The crisis has exposed this gap in stark terms.
Our /fuel-supply dashboard shows the Hormuz status alongside three other maritime chokepoints (Malacca, Red Sea, Indonesian straits) with compact editorial status cards, updated as the situation develops.
2026 crisis-era, against the FY2024-25 DCCEEW baseline.
| Supplier | Current | Baseline | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | 32% | 23% | +9pp |
| Singapore | 23% | 22% | +1pp |
| Malaysia | 23% | 14% | +9pp |
| Others | 22% | 41% | -19pp |
Malaysia and South Korea have absorbed most of the capacity previously sourced from Singapore, China, the Middle East, Japan, and India.
Shares are from the DCCEEW Australian Petroleum Statistics for FY2024-25, the most recent full year of official data. Risk ratings are editorial and reflect current conditions, not FY2024-25.
| Country | Share | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | 23% | Medium | Major refinery capacity (SK Energy, GS Caltex); Gulf crude access is disrupted by the declared Hormuz closure and, since 11 September, by the closure of the Saudi East-West pipeline that fed the Red Sea route. Seoul capped fuel exports at 2025 monthly levels in March 2026 and renews the cap in four-week rounds; the ninth expires on 18 September and an extension is expected after a 14 September emergency meeting with the refiners, who are being offered freight subsidies to detour crude via Suez. The cap restricts spot cargoes while preserving term-contracted volumes, which is how Australia buys from Korea; Sydney's August tanker arrivals were led by Korean cargoes, 18 of 29 counted. |
| Singapore | 22% | Medium | Primary refining hub. Gulf crude feedstock is disrupted again: Hormuz was declared closed on 12 July and transits are near standstill, so refiners are leaning on non-Gulf crude and inventories. Singapore is the largest single source of Australia's petrol specifically, at 55 per cent, even though it is second to South Korea across all refined products combined. |
| Malaysia | 14% | Low | Petronas. Less dependent on Gulf crude, and the largest of the sources that gained share as Gulf-linked supply was displaced. Growing export capacity. |
| India | 12% | Medium | Reliance Jamnagar world's largest refinery. Sourcing Russian crude to offset Gulf losses. No export ban, but New Delhi has raised export levies twice since August: on 1 September 2026 the diesel levy went to 25 rupees a litre, a 1.50 rupee levy was imposed on petrol for the first time and the jet fuel levy was trimmed to 19 rupees, on a fortnightly review cycle, and domestic sales quotas on refiners remain in place with the percentages undisclosed. The bigger pull on Australian supply is commercial rather than regulatory: Reliance ran diesel exports to Europe at a ten-month high and to Brazil at an eleven-month high in July, so the arbitrage is drawing Indian barrels to the Atlantic Basin. |
| Taiwan | 8% | Medium | Formosa Petrochemical and CPC. A larger source of Australia's refined product than Japan or China, and previously folded into the residual bucket rather than named. Gulf-crude exposed on the same terms as Korea and Japan, with its own separate strait risk. |
| China | 7% | Medium | Beijing lifted its refined-fuel export restrictions for July 2026 and August eased further rather than reverting: 2.7 Mt of gasoline, diesel and jet approved for the month, the largest approval since the curbs began, and customs data show August refined-product exports of 6.01 Mt, up 29 per cent on July and above August 2025, so the approvals did ship. September exports are expected at slightly more than 4 Mt, with more than 60 per cent of the allowances held by PetroChina and Sinopec and no formal September quota issued as at 2 September. Controls are eased, not gone: exports still run under allocated quotas skewed to state refiners, and refiners must show adequate domestic stockpiles first. |
| Brunei | 5% | Low | Brunei Shell and the Hengyi refinery at Pulau Muara Besar. Runs substantially on Brunei's own crude rather than Gulf feedstock, which is why it is rated alongside Malaysia. Previously folded into the residual bucket rather than named. |
| Japan | 4% | Medium | Jet fuel specialist. Crude supply constrained but strategic reserves providing buffer. Declining domestic demand frees some capacity. Note this is a much smaller share of Australia's refined-product imports than the site previously published. |
| Middle East | 2% | Critical | Gulf-origin flows stay effectively cut off, and the workaround has now been hit too. Hormuz has been closed since March, with the IRGC declaring it closed on 12 July and banning all maritime traffic on 19 July; the newest like-for-like count is 6 transits on 6 September against a normal near 88, about 7 per cent, and war-risk cover has firmed to 7.5 to 10 per cent of hull value. The Red Sea alternative deteriorated in late July: a Houthi strike burned the Jizan refinery on 25 July and targeted Yanbu, the corridor carrying about 92 per cent of Saudi seaborne crude exports, and Saudi Arabia briefly suspended Red Sea shipments on 26 July. Iran and Oman announced a temporary transit route on 26 August, but it is subject to Iranian permission, no ship has been reported using it, and the regional meeting meant to settle it was postponed on 13 September; United States forces reported clearing more than 100 suspected mines from the traffic separation scheme on 25 August, but the strait has since become the scene of a tanker war between the United States and Iran, and the Saudi East-West pipeline that fed the Red Sea route was shut after a drone attack on 11 September. |
| Other | 3% | Medium | The United States, Thailand, Indonesia and spot-market cargoes, each individually below 3 per cent. US volumes are the ones to watch: Australia has been drawing cargoes from the US Gulf and West Coast during this crisis, reported as the largest monthly inflow of US fuel since the 1990s, which is a genuinely new routing rather than a rebalancing within Asia. |
Combined disrupted supply: roughly 9% of the FY2024-25 baseline (China and Middle East flows) was heavily curtailed through the 2026 crisis. Middle East flows are again cut off after the Strait of Hormuz was declared closed on 12 July 2026. China's export curbs, by contrast, have eased for two consecutive months, with the August 2026 approval the largest since the curbs began, though exports still run under allocated quotas skewed to state refiners and an approval is not a shipment. The crisis-era table above shows where that supply was replaced.
A three-source concentration (South Korea 32%, Singapore 23%, Malaysia 23%) in a year of crude feedstock stress is a single geopolitical shock away from another step-change. The pre-crisis eight-country spread offered more shock absorbers than the 2026 bucket shape does.
Australia is at Level 2 (Keeping Australia moving) of the four-level National Fuel Security Plan, the official scale published by the Australian Government at fuelplan.gov.au (checked 15 September 2026). The official levels describe government activity; the reserve-cover reading below is our own editorial layer and is not part of the plan.
Indicative reserve-cover band 2 of 4, Early response, derived from average reserve cover of about 34 days. This is FuelCrisis's editorial reading, separate from the official National Fuel Security Plan level stated above.
Announced 12 May 2026: a $3.2 billion Australian Fuel Security Reserve, a $7.5 billion Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility, around one billion extra litres of fuel secured for March to June 2026 by temporarily relaxing the Minimum Stockholding Obligation and adjusting fuel standards, a higher Minimum Stockholding Obligation which together with the Reserve is intended to lift Australia's reserves of diesel and jet fuel to 50 days, and, for the ACCC, penalties for major breaches doubled from $50 million to $100 million plus new civil penalties for breaches of the Oil Code of Conduct.
Higher-sulphur petrol can accelerate catalytic converter and oxygen sensor wear over years of exposure. High-performance models (BMW M, AMG, Porsche, Audi RS) are specified for 10 ppm fuel. Petrol stays above that limit until 1 January 2027, three months longer than the diesel relaxation runs.
Much internationally traded petrol sits at 50 ppm and some diesel cargoes test below the previous flash-point floor; easing both widens the import pool while Hormuz remains disrupted. Long-term standards are unchanged. The caps revert on the staged timetable above, fully restored on 1 January 2027 unless extended.
| Shock | Crude | Australian pumps | Lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973-74OPEC embargo | Posted Saudi Light marker rose from US$2.90 to US$11.65/bbl (+302%) | ABS CPI motor fuel rose sharply through 1974; retail roughly doubled in nominal terms | Supply embargoes can triple crude; Australia's only lever then was direct price control |
| 1990-91Gulf War | Brent rose from about US$17 to a mid-October peak near US$36, back under US$20 by February | ULP up roughly 15 to 20% at the peak, mostly unwound by mid-1991 | War-risk spikes can fully unwind once supply fears resolve |
| 2008Record peak, then GFC collapse | Brent hit a record US$147.50 in July, then fell about 76% to near US$36 by December | ULP peaked above $1.65/L mid-year, back near $1.00/L by early 2009 (AIP) | Demand collapse beats supply tightness; the AUD fell from 0.98 to 0.62 alongside, blunting pump relief |
| 2020COVID demand shock | Brent near US$19; the NYMEX WTI May contract settled at minus US$37.63 on 20 April | ULP below $1.10/L through mid-2020, the weakest in almost a decade | Demand shocks can drive prices to historic lows; the AUD touched 0.55 |
| 2022Russia invades Ukraine | Brent rose from US$94 to a US$127.98 peak on 8 March, then ranged US$95 to 120 | Nominal record near $2.20/L mid-year | Excise relief is Australia's go-to lever: 44.2 to 22.1 c/L for six months in 2022, the precedent for the 2026 cut |
| 2026Strait of Hormuz closure, brief reopening, and re-closure (ongoing) | Pre-crisis Brent baseline US$73/bbl; loadings fell from about 20 to under 4 million bbl/day at the peak and Brent spiked to a US$126 high, then flows recovered above 10 million bbl/day as a mid-June US-Iran accord reopened transit and Brent eased to about US$72, before renewed Iranian attacks from early July stalled transits again and the strait was declared closed on 12 July, with tanker strikes and a reimposed US naval blockade pushing Brent back to about US$85 | Pre-crisis national ULP baseline 171 c/L (ACCC Q4 2025); current levels on /fuel-prices | The 2026 excise cut follows the 2022 playbook; live status on every tracker page |
Figures verified against primary sources (EIA petroleum chronology and Brent series, RBA historical exchange rates, ABS 6401.0, AIP weekly reports, IEA Oil Market Report April 2026). The 2026 row is also updated from the Wikipedia 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis timeline, Trading Economics Brent commentary (3 July 2026), and early-July re-escalation coverage (Axios and Al Jazeera 7 July, CNBC 8 July, Reuters 9 July 2026); the 12 July declared closure and re-closure are per straits.live (17 July 2026) and Bloomberg and CNBC (14 to 16 July 2026). Brent was not continuously quoted before the 1980s; the 1973 row uses the posted Saudi Light marker. No forecast implied.
We will notify you when we add new government data sources, refine our calculations, or issue corrections. Full transparency, no surprises. For specific verification requests, email info@fuelcrisis.com.au.