Looking For Oil in All the Wrong Places

The Australian government has gone looking for oil in East and Southeast Asia with little or no understanding of where it actually comes from.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong pose for a photo after signing a Joint Statement on Economic Resilience and Essential Supplies in Singapore, Apr. 10, 2026.

On April 19, Singapore’s Channel News Asia reported that Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam were in talks with Russia for the supply of crude oil, despite Russia’s war in Ukraine, given the disruption of supplies from the Middle East due to the U.S.-Iran conflict.

Despite this clear indication that Southeast Asia was short of oil for its own needs, the Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Foreign Minister Penny Wong, embarked on a mission to East and Southeast Asia to seek guarantees of supply for petrol, diesel, and fertilizer from some of the same countries. The results, as reported, were predictably embarrassing.

First, on April 22, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s office stated that diesel shipments that were reported to be heading to Australia from Malaysia were not in fact from the country’s own supplies.

“The fuel that is being supplied to Australia is under a contract between Viva Energy and BP Australia, which was reflected in the media report,” it stated, as per New Straits Times. “It is described as being ‘from Malaysia’ because the vessel loads fuel stored in Malaysia.”

The PMO added, “The diesel does not originate from Malaysia’s natural resources.”

The PMO statement was issued in response to Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s assertion that he had secured 200 million litres of diesel from South Korea, and one shipment of diesel each from Brunei and Malaysia, following his discussions with Anwar Ibrahim and Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Anwar does, by law, have complete control over national oil company Petronas, as well as Malaysia’s oil and gas industries, but tellingly, all Anwar did was to have discussions between the Australian Government and Petronas.

Prior to his meeting with Anwar, Albanese met with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, and both leaders agreed to ensure a continued flow of gas from Australia and petrol from Singapore. However, Singapore is not an oil and gas producer, and does not have a national oil company that it can command to guarantee or prioritize supplies. Singapore is and always has been an oil, gas, petrol and petrochemical trading hub, from which the world’s major oil and gas players, including Petronas, buy and sell products. That fact did not seem to be a factor in Albanese and later Penny Wong’s discussions in Singapore; there are no reports anywhere of meetings with the major oil players based in Singapore, except perhaps Vitol, which trades in Australia as Viva.

In any event, Singapore’s government has not been known to interfere with the oil majors’ trades, and it is very highly unlikely that Lawrence Wong is going to make an exception for Albanese. Indeed, the Singaporean leader promised Albanese that his government would not stop trading oil to Australia, but that was reported by Australian media as a guarantee of supply to Australia, attributable to Albanese’s diplomatic efforts.

Albanese then met with the Sultan of Brunei, but not (it appears) anyone from Brunei Shell Petroleum, which remains the Sultan’s primary partner in Brunei’s upstream and downstream oil sectors and markets oil extracted from Brunei.

Following Albanese’s tour of Southeast Asia, Penny Wong visited Japan, China and Korea, declaring ahead of her departure that “we are reliable suppliers. We want to continue to be reliable suppliers… to do that, we need to have diesel, we need to have jet fuel, we need to have petrol, and we need to have fertilizer too.”

Wong said that she would carry this message to Japan, China, and........

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