Australia has no oil production because of climate theory. By Eric Johnston in The Australian.

There’s no one better placed to talk about how Australia left itself so exposed on fuel than Adrian Cook. After all, listed explorer Carnarvon Energy, which he ran for more than a decade, discovered the nation’s biggest offshore oilfields of this century. … The field is better known as Dorado, and it’s an underwater energy goldmine.

But like its name suggests, it is frustratingly out of reach. The project has sat idle for years due to a lack of support. When it comes to producing homegrown oil, Australia simply doesn’t have any stomach for it. …

[Cook] describes an entire “ecosystem” that choked off Australia’s once booming oil industry — whereby oil didn’t fail due to a lack of resources but because overlapping political, financial and social pressures slowly created an environment in which development became impossible.

“It was this ecosystem that fed on itself around the climate change thematic,” Cook tells The Australian. …

Banks and government actively discouraged oil exploration and production in Australia because they believed carbon emissions were over heating the planet (but “forgot” to do due diligence on the climate models):

Cook says the shift became noticeable from mid last decade when it began getting more difficult to get funding and even regulatory support was slowing for Carnarvon’s efforts….

“Governments became nervous about approving activities, granting retention licences, production licences; lenders — particularly the Aussie four banks — became nervous, stopped lending to the sector. Investors were sensing things were not happening in this sector versus other sectors and started moving capital elsewhere,” he says. …

Australia has oil but the wrong ruling class:

Cook is emphatic that commercial quantities of oil exist in Australia, saying “it is literally there” and describes it as “a frustration for all Australians” that it is undeveloped.

But the capital needed to first find it and then extract it is simply heading to other countries.

He points to specific proven reserves including Dorado in the under-explored Bedout Basin, the broader Canning Basin and particularly the nearby Browse Basin, which he believes “could be one of the biggest things in this country”. …

Cook says the rhetoric of Australia moving to net zero has “run ahead of reality.… If the farmer can’t have the diesel or the fertiliser to basically bring us food, we suffer as a nation very quickly.”