Argues that Australian policymakers need to articulate a strategy for the possibility that a large, state-owned oil company will make a bid for an Australian energy company or major energy asset.

Policy recommendations

• Australia must develop and articulate a robust energy security strategy which aligns national security imperatives and the need to maintain an open, market-based system of resource extraction and exports.
• At some stage in the future, there will be a bid by a National Oil Company for an Australian energy company or major Australian energy asset. Any energy security strategy document should outline the broad principles around foreign investment and the mechanism in which substantive changes in the structure of the sector is reviewed.
• As Australia becomes a larger exporter of energy, it will inevitably become bound up in the energy security consid - erations of other nations. Improving the skills of Australia’s diplomatic core in the financing and markets of energy projects will be important since they will inevitably have to traverse these issues.