Interview with Natalie Barr, Sunrise

HOST, NATALIE BARR: A Victorian oil refinery, one of Australia's last two refineries, has been engulfed in flames, with the explosive blaze still burning out of control near Geelong and joining us now is Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Good morning to you. We are following this breaking news on the inferno at the Geelong oil refinery.

How much is this going to impact our fuel supply? MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY, CHRIS BOWEN: Good morning, Nat. Yes, a fire broke out at the Geelong refinery, about 11 pm last night.

It's quite a major fire. It's still burning. The good news is no one has been injured.

Is the advice to me. Everyone is safe. That's the first thing, and obviously the Victorian fire authorities will make further announcements during the course of the day about impacts on local area.

There is an impact on production at this stage, petrol, high octane petrol in particular, diesel and jet fuel continues to be produced at the refinery, but obviously I've been talking to the chief executive over the last several hours and will continue to talk to him today to get better assessments, as you'd understand Nat, t’s very early in terms of assessments on production.

It doesn't help. That is true. It will impact on production.

At this point, petrol rather than diesel and jet fuel, but we're going to continue to really work closely with Viva, the company and really monitor and work together on any impacts. Yeah, because we've got the Prime Minister flying around the world, basically, trying to get more fuel, and we've got a fire here. How concerned are you?

Well, it's not great. It not great. Timing, is it?

It's not a positive development. It's a fire. It's, you know, it's happened.

It's no one's fault. obviously, we'll work very close. [interrupts] It's not sabotage, is it? Do you know how it happened? Look, there'll be an investigation.

There will be an investigation now, but at this point, no suspicious circumstances, you know, all appears to be accidental. Okay. New South Wales is now considering stockpiling its own fuel following in the footsteps of WA.

Are we going to see a situation where individual states start competing for fuel? Look, look, I welcome states taking actions. I think that's a good thing.

So WA has taken this action. They made sure that this is additional diesel into Australia, not taking off another state. I think that's the key.

I wouldn't like to see states competing with each other and trying to take diesel off each other. That would be negative, but where a state for their own particular purposes, and I think you'd understand that. Western Australia's got particular needs for Pilbara, heavy industry, et cetera. where they're taking that sort of action.

It's not a huge number of millions of litres, but, you know, it's material, it helps so many states want to take that action and, you know, make sure that they're working together and working with us as Western Australia has done. I certainly see that as a positive contribution. It feels, it's not the Hunger Games for fuel, is it?

Shouldn't the federal government be sort of controlling this? Well, we are going, as you've said, we're, you know, really focussed on fuel supply, and we've made good progress, and we've got more to say over the course of today and the Prime Minister's playing a blinder in Southeast Asia, making sure that our supply is as secure as it can be in a very difficult international circumstance.

But states have a role to play and as long as it's being, you know, all being done in a coordinated fashion, which it is, I think that's all very positive. Okay, thanks very much. Energy minister, Chris Bowen.

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