
Walter Colnaghi
PhD candidate at ANU School of Politics and International Relations researching industrial policy and economic security
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May 28, 2026
Beyond oil: what the Hormuz crisis means for Australia
3:11
3:24
3:42
3:52
4:10
21:50
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3:02Sharryn ParkerHOST
Can we start with you, Walter, to consider the downstream shortage crisis from Hormuz and the idea that it's not just an oil story?

Walter ColnaghiGUEST
Well, you've touched it already on your introduction where we see Iran weaponizing a geographical choke point, throwing the world economy into disarray because we can't get enough of this very basic feedstock, which is crude oil.

Walter ColnaghiGUEST
But we've seen something very interesting, which is when we see obviously prices going up and the indexes for crude oil price, like internationally going up, they haven't skyrocketed, at least not even to the same extent that they did in twenty twenty-two when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Walter ColnaghiGUEST
But what we see, it's the spread between the price of crude oil and the cost of the refined products.

Walter ColnaghiGUEST
So we see all the products that actually have, like, economic utility that we use crude oil for, such as fuels, fertilizers, semiconductor manufacturing components that are very useful, and for obviously basic components for many healthcare applications.

Walter ColnaghiGUEST
So where we see this crisis hitting is not at the first level, which is the one of the crude product, but is really hitting at the second level, which is how, how do you transform the crude product into something with actual real world application? And we're discovering now that the ability to turn the crude into something with economic utility is very concentrated.
17 MINS LATER

David LeaneyGUEST
And so that actually improved the strategic positioning of Australia's natural gas and enabled us to have a very powerful bargaining chip to go into those varied bilateral agreements so that the legal enforceability of the contract is nowhere near as important as the carrot and the stick that we have there, in particular with our natural gas exports.