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