Australia's Pilbara Oil Refinery Plan Draws 'Dinosaur Technology' Warning

Climate policy experts say a $4m feasibility study will likely confirm what they already suspect — but the sourcing here is thin, and we're saying so

By Ada "Peer-Review" Sparks

The Albanese government this week put up $4 million for an early-stage feasibility study into a new oil refinery in Western Australia's Pilbara region. Guardian Australia's reporting describes it as the first such project floated in Australia in 60 years — a historical claim we're attributing to that outlet's reporting, since we have no independent record to check it against. The study is a joint effort with the WA government, and officials frame it as a fuel-security move amid volatility from the Middle East war.

But climate policy experts who spoke to Guardian Australia were blunt: they expect the study to show the refinery would be uneconomic and would need ongoing government subsidy to survive. One description that stuck — a refinery would be an investment in "dinosaur technology," money better spent building out clean energy capacity that would do more to insulate Australia from fuel shocks than a new fossil-fuel plant ever could.

Here's the caveat, stated plainly: the Guardian's climate policy experts are unnamed, and no institutional affiliation is given for any of them. According to unnamed climate policy experts cited only by the Guardian, whose identities and institutional affiliations were not disclosed, the refinery is expected to prove uneconomic without ongoing subsidy — a prediction the Press could not independently confirm. That's not a knock on the Guardian's reporting so much as a limit on what we can vouch for ourselves. This rests on unnamed sourcing from a single outlet, not a published technical analysis — no modelling, cost curve, or named authors are cited in what's available to us. The "dinosaur technology" assessment should be read with that in mind until the feasibility study itself surfaces.

The experts quoted don't dispute that commissioning the feasibility study itself is reasonable; their objection is to where they expect it to lead, and to the opportunity cost of the money either way.

That's the real question a $4 million study is supposed to answer: is a Pilbara refinery a genuine hedge against fuel-security risk, or a legacy technology bet dressed up as one? Until the study itself is published, with its assumptions on the table, there's no way to check the experts' prediction against the numbers. Worth watching for when — and whether — that study sees daylight.

Extraordinary claims. Ordinary evidence? Then no.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."