Concern over fuel shortage risk as shipping disruptions continue

There are con­cerns in the mar­itime sec­tor that petrol sup­plies could be affect­ed by the same type of ship­ping dis­rup­tions cre­at­ing chaos in oth­er sup­ply chains.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand rep­re­sents sea­far­ers, the New Zealand Mer­chant Ser­vice Guild rep­re­sents ship’s mas­ters and offi­cers, and the Avi­a­tion and Marine Engi­neers Asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents marine engi­neers.

The three unions say ongo­ing sup­ply chain con­ges­tion is show­ing no signs of let up in 2022 and many indus­tries are suf­fer­ing as a result, from the import of build­ing sup­plies to pri­ma­ry pro­duce exporters.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says a reliance on over­seas ship­ping and the run­ning down of New Zealand’s ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty had led to a “per­fect storm.”

Mr Har­ri­son says it is extreme­ly con­cern­ing that New Zealand coastal tankers were now under threat as well, fol­low­ing the deci­sion to close Mars­den Point refin­ery.

New Zealand tankers cur­rent­ly deliv­er fuel to New Zealand ports from Mars­den Point.

How­ev­er, the ves­sels are under imme­di­ate threat of being replaced by petrol com­pa­nies using direct imports from over­seas tankers.

The two cur­rent New Zealand oil tankers are char­tered by Coastal Oil Logis­tics (COLL), a joint ven­ture between New Zealand’s major petro­le­um sup­pli­ers BP Oil New Zealand Lim­it­ed, Mobil Oil New Zealand Lim­it­ed and the Z Ener­gy Group, who are also major share­hold­ers in Refin­ing NZ, who oper­ate Mars­den Point.

Mr Har­ri­son says it is bizarre that at a time when inter­na­tion­al ship­ping was in chaos, that New Zealand was “sleep­walk­ing” towards a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion with fuel imports.

“It is essen­tial the same prob­lems occur­ring in the con­tain­er trade are not allowed to repli­cate with New Zealand fuel sup­plies.”

He says New Zealand coastal tankers pro­vid­ed a ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice and a lev­el of redun­dan­cy which could not be guar­an­teed by over­seas ship­ping, despite what petrol com­pa­nies said.

There are numer­ous sce­nar­ios where out­side sit­u­a­tions could result in dis­rup­tion and delays with over­seas ship­ping, he says.

Mr Har­ri­son says one straight­for­ward solu­tion to ship­ping con­ges­tion would be to rebuild New Zealand domes­tic ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty to ensure reg­u­lar and reli­able ser­vices to region­al ports, reduc­ing the reliance on over­seas ship­ping.

“This includes keep­ing New Zealand coastal oil tankers in ser­vice to reduce the risk of delays or ser­vice fail­ure.”

A new cam­paign had been set up to raise aware­ness of the sit­u­a­tion includ­ing the web­site fuelsecurity.nz