Maritime unions say jet fuel debacle has exposed predicted weakness in system

Three of New Zealand’s mar­itime unions say fuel com­pa­nies Z, Mobil and BP have let New Zealand down after off-spec jet fuel threat­ens to dis­rupt pre-Christ­mas flights.

The three unions led the Save Our Tankers cam­paign ear­li­er this year to keep the now-closed Mars­den Point refin­ery oper­at­ing, with local deliv­er­ies of fuel pro­vid­ed by New Zealand flagged coastal tankers.

Air­lines have been advised this week they may be sub­ject to fuel rationing over Decem­ber after a bad batch of prod­uct was import­ed.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand rep­re­sent­ing sea­far­ers, the New Zealand Mer­chant Ser­vice Guild rep­re­sent­ing ship’s mas­ters and offi­cers, and the Avi­a­tion and Marine Engi­neers Asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing marine engi­neers, today spoke out on the sit­u­a­tion.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the new sit­u­a­tion is a result of let­ting fuel secu­ri­ty be deter­mined by the self-inter­est of over­seas cor­po­rates.

“The com­pa­nies, in par­tic­u­lar Z Ener­gy, want­ed to move to this new sys­tem because it was more prof­itable for them, not because it pro­vid­ed fuel secu­ri­ty for New Zealand.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the fuel com­pa­nies need to front up to the pub­lic and explain them­selves.

He says it has only tak­en a few months for the wheels to come off the new import sys­tem, at the worst pos­si­ble time for hol­i­day trav­el and as New Zealand rebuilds its tourism indus­try.

Mr Har­ri­son says if New Zealand still had its own refin­ery and tankers, then it would have the abil­i­ty to reprocess off spec fuel local­ly, cush­ion­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic from sup­ply shocks.

He says New Zealand is cur­rent­ly depen­dent on new refined fuel sup­plies arriv­ing from refiner­ies in the North­ern Hemi­sphere.

The New Zealand Mer­chant Ser­vice Guild says the gov­ern­ment was mis­led by force­ful assur­ances from Z Ener­gy and oth­er com­pa­nies that the new mod­el would safe­guard against fuel sup­ply dis­rup­tions.

New Zealand Mer­chant Ser­vice Guild Vice Pres­i­dent, Cap­tain Iain MacLeod, says unions warned of this exact sce­nario pri­or to the Gov­ern­ment deci­sion to endorse the new sup­ply mod­el.

Anec­do­tal evi­dence from indus­try sources sug­gests this is now the fifth occa­sion sub­stan­dard fuel has been import­ed to New Zealand under the new mod­el, says Cap­tain MacLeod.

There was a sim­i­lar avi­a­tion fuel dis­rup­tion in 2017 when a fuel pipe between Mars­den and Auck­land was rup­tured. New Zealand coastal tankers were able to be part of the response at that time.

Two New Zealand crewed and flagged coastal tankers were tak­en out of ser­vice ear­li­er in 2022 after oil com­pa­nies shut down Mars­den Point refin­ery and moved to a direct import mod­el.

Mr Har­ri­son says there was still a need for refin­ing capa­bil­i­ty in New Zealand and a fleet of New Zealand coastal tankers to pro­vide ded­i­cat­ed local ser­vice and redun­dan­cy in case of emer­gency sit­u­a­tions.

He says the world is expe­ri­enc­ing volatile eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and ener­gy secu­ri­ty threats, and New Zealand needs to build more resilience into the sys­tem.