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Bear with me, this idea is not fully formed and I hope some discussion can clarify it.

In Australia it has come to light that we are down to 22 days crude, 24 days diesel and 17 days petrol in storage, some 49 days against our IEA obligation to hold 90 days. This is because 4 of our 9 refineries have closed since 2009, we're producing only 40% of the oil we did in 2000 and our refineries are half or 2/3 the size they need to be for competiveness.

The opposition, who is likely to be in government in the next few months, has said they'd build up reserves and further build up a strategic fleet of merchant ships. In any case something needs to be done.

Now as we know globalisation has produced a backlash as many good jobs have gone elsewhere. However it appears that counties cannot go full globalisation due to strategic security requirements, I'm sure Australia is not alone in thinking about fuel security in a fully free market system for example.

So could these issues, if properly addressed before they become problems reduce the backlash from globalization? For example when the refinery in Adelaide was mothballed in 2003 the government could have invested in strategic expansion of other refineries to get them closer to the 200,000bbl a day point of competitiveness. The same goes for other industries that might be kept alive at a certain threshold for strategic insurance purposes, would they employ enough people in good jobs to stave off anti globalization movement?
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