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Former GM Holden engineer and safety campaigner Dr Laurie Sparke wants Australians to convert their cars and trucks to LPG and natural gas to avert what otherwise will be a catastrophe for the country - a shortfall of transport fuels.
Dr Sparke told a Society of Automotive Engineers conference across the Tasman that Australia was facing a supply crisis.
He said the danger to the economy was getting more urgent and called for a massive shift to LPG and natural gas. Oil depletion was arguably the most serious crisis ever to face Australian society, he said.
He warned that the Australian Government's economic research agency Abare had forecast a 90 per cent probability of a major and immediate shortfall of oil.
He said oil supplies were predicted by the International Energy Agency to become extremely tight within five years, and oil production in most of the nations supplying Australia was falling and that as many of these nations were developing their economies they would keep more oil for themselves and export less to Australia.
Peak oil (the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached) would hit countries dependent on imports and the effects would occur very rapidly once the exporting trade partners oil reserves have peaked, Dr Sparke said.
He told GoAuto website publisher John Mellor that Australia was importing more than half its transport fuels, including oil for cars, and nearly all supplies of diesel fuel.
Dr Sparke said the truck industry was especially vulnerable because of its reliance on imported diesel fuel.
Australia used 29 billion litres of diesel fuel in the past year, of which 90 per cent was used in road transport. Yet the freight task in Australia is predicted to double by 2020 and in some places such as Melbourne it is forecast to increase by 400 per cent.
He said Australia was facing a serious supply crunch within five years and needed to be concerned about what other fuel resources would be available in the short term. How soon before we relive the fuel shortages of the 1970s and the 1980s, with driving and refuelling on alternative days for odds and even number plates?
Only this time it will not resolve itself in a few months, it will continue to get worse.
Dr Sparke said Australia had vast reserves of gas that were adequate to fuel its transport system for the next century and beyond.
Most importantly, gas can replace the shortfall of oil in the near future, helping to avert what otherwise would be a catastrophe.
