Experts say a new port could replace the USA military’s main fuelling station in the Pacific region after the closure of a storage facility at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

The federal budget allocated $1.5 billion to build “new port infrastructure, such as a wharf, an offloading facility and dredging of the shipping channel” in the Northern Territory.

Infrastructure Department Secretary Simon Atkinson told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday the new port would be built at Middle Arm in Darwin Harbour.

The government has been in discussion with Defence officials for five months, the hearing was told, and the new port would be open to naval ships as well as private industry for minerals exports and energy exports.

Australian National University professor of defence studies, John Blaxland, said the USA would “no doubt” be looking to locations such as Darwin to bolster its fuel storage.

“It’s not unreasonable to say that additional facilities in and around Darwin will be dual-roled, they will be available for use by US forces,” Professor Blaxland said.

“Darwin is a frequently visited port for US warships transiting from East Coast USA to the Middle East, through the Pacific, across the Indian Ocean, as well as visits from the Seventh Fleet based in Japan.”

The USA military’s massive Red Hill facility, which stored 950 million litre of fuel in underground tanks, was closed down earlier this month due to groundwater contamination.

The Department of Defence has been busy denying that it may develop a naval port at Glyde Point, 40km northeast of Darwin. It doesn’t deny that the territory government may be encouraged to build one itself. Wink, wink.

If Australia is keen to ensure that the US remains engaged in the region (and dedicated to Australia’s defence), nothing says commitment like infrastructure.

The most attractive feature of building a naval port at Glyde Point may be its future use by the RAN itself. China has announced plans to build a “fishery industrial park” at Daru on the south coast of Papua New Guinea. With no fish in the water but Australia within sight, the planned facility presumably is aimed at threatening the Torres Strait.

"no American ally is potentially more important than"

It’s history now that the then-US president Barack Obama was shocked in 2015 to read that the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party government had awarded a Chinese company — with alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army — a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin, in a $506m deal.

The ABC reported in June 2019, citing “multiple officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity”, that “secret planning” had begun for a new port facility just outside Darwin, which could eventually help US Marines operate more readily in the Indo-Pacific.

In July this year, a Northern Territory government report on developing Gunn Point, just west of Glyde Point, contained a tantalising reference to a possible port.

However, the report’s author — the NT Planning Commission — stated on its website that “there are no current plans for Defence infrastructure within the Gunn Point Peninsula”.

so I guess that means there may be Defence infrastructure within the Gunn Point Peninsula?

Gunn Point is a favourite fishing and camping spot, but it in the future it may be home to a port, irrigation farming, and possibly even a new town.

A second Darwin port has been talked about for years, and found itself back in the headlines last year when stories emerged of "secret plans" to develop Glyde Point to accommodate US Marines.

But on its website the Planning Commission makes the deliberate point that "there are no current plans for Defence infrastructure within the Gunn Point Peninsula".

no current plans

The U.S. and Australia should establish a combined amphibious force including 2,000 Marines and a similar number of sailors based in Darwin, Australia, to build regional support for countering China’s ambitions in the western Pacific, according to a former Marine colonel.

Grant Newsham, now a senior researcher with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, Tokyo, said Monday that the Marine Corps, which rotated 2,500 Marines through Darwin during the summer, needs to see Australia as more than just a great place to train.

Berger wrote that U.S. “forward bases and legacy infrastructure within the adversary’s weapons engagement zone are now extremely vulnerable.”

Newsham said an “Australian-American Amphibious Force” supported by amphibious ships from both nations could solve that problem. Such a force could be home-ported in Darwin along with facilities such as American schools and shops, he said.

The new amphibious force wouldn’t require stationing an aircraft carrier Down Under, Newsham said. Air support for the Marines could be provided by aircraft operating from bases in the Northern Territory or new F-35B stealth jets flying off the decks of amphibious ships, he said.

James Holmes, a strategist at the Naval War College, wrote Dec. 9 in National Interest magazine that concerns about China could boost Australian support for a permanent U.S. military presence Down Under. “Stationing military forces overseas inspires trust. In turn, an unbreakable bond between America and Australia could give China pause the next time it contemplates making mischief,” he wrote.