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CANBERRA: ExxonMobil has urged the Australian
federal opposition to use its numbers in the Senate to protect the petrol
refining industry from being forced offshore by the Rudd Government's proposed
emissions trading scheme.
ExxonMobil's head of refining for Australia and New Zealand, Glenn Henson, told a meeting of more than 50 Coalition MPs and senators in Canberra that a carbon price of $20 a tonne, rising to $50, would make petrol refining in Australia unprofitable.
As it is currently structured, the ETS made it likely that Australia's petrol would be supplied from refineries in Asian countries that did not put a price on carbon, he told the group.
An Exxon spokesperson later said: "We wanted to make sure the Coalition fully understood the consequences of what the Government is proposing.
"We wanted to explain that the long-term viability of our business could be threatened."
ExxonMobil has never supported an Australian ETS, but many in the Coalition are angry some major business groups have broadly backed the Government's emissions trading plans and its timetable to introduce the scheme by 2010.
Nationals senator Ron Boswell told the Coalition partyroom business leaders had rejected the "lifeline" thrown to them by the Coalition to use the Senate to delay the scheme.
He is reported to have said: "If these turkeys in business want an early Christmas, they should try to negotiate the emissions trading scheme in the Senate with Labor and the Greens.”
For its part, the Rudd Government is forming the view that the global economic crisis means the effects of the emissions trading regime should be cushioned when it begins in 2010.
Senior government sources were quited as saying the global economic slowdown was consolidating a view that there should be a "soft start" to the trading scheme, possibly along the lines advocated by government adviser Ross Garnaut of a low fixed carbon price for the first two years and a range of reduction trajectories depending on the outcome of the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen next year.
