Maritime Union flags concerns over coastal tanker threat

The Mar­itime Union says New Zealand’s ener­gy secu­ri­ty is under threat as New Zealand flagged coastal tankers face an uncer­tain future.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the pro­posed clo­sure of the Mars­den Point oil refin­ery leaves big ques­tions as to how fuel will be deliv­ered in future to New Zealand ports.

Two New Zealand flagged and New Zealand crewed coastal tankers cur­rent­ly oper­ate on the New Zealand coast, the MT Kokako and the MT Matuku.

The ves­sels are man­aged by New Zealand oper­a­tor Sil­ver Fern Ship­ping Lim­it­ed and owned by inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tor ASP Ship Man­age­ment Group, which char­ters them to Coastal Oil Logis­tics Lim­it­ed (COLL).

COLL trans­ports petro­le­um prod­ucts from Mars­den Point to New Zealand ports on behalf of its share­hold­ers BP, Mobil and Z.

Mr Har­ri­son says the Mars­den Point sit­u­a­tion would have a “cas­cad­ing effect” and some con­se­quences had not been con­sid­ered.

He says that if New Zealand coastal tankers are removed from the pic­ture, it will be a blow to nation­al sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty.

“Glob­al ship­ping and logis­tics are already in tur­moil, with major prob­lems due to ship­ping short­ages and port con­ges­tion.”

“If fuel deliv­er­ies were to come in on over­seas ships direct to New Zealand ports, this leaves New Zealand wide open to the same type of dis­rup­tion that has affect­ed ship­ping and ports glob­al­ly in the last year, but for essen­tial fuel sup­plies”.

Mr Har­ri­son says New Zealand coastal tankers were able to offer a back­up dur­ing dis­as­ters such as earth­quakes or flood­ing that dis­rupt land based fuel move­ments, pro­vid­ing a lev­el of redun­dan­cy in the sup­ply chain.

He says the fuel pipeline rup­ture between Mars­den Point and Auck­land in 2017 was a real life exam­ple where coastal tankers pro­vid­ed a back­up.

“The same would not hap­pen if we are depen­dent on over­seas tankers who were locked into sched­ules and had no oth­er com­mit­ment to New Zealand.”

Mr Har­ri­son says it is essen­tial that a mar­itime nation like New Zealand has the abil­i­ty and resilience to ser­vice its own ports with its own ship­ping, and coastal fuel tankers were a major part of the mix.

He says the Mar­itime Union is ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to do a risk analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion and to back New Zealand ship­ping.