Loss of coastal tankers a severe blow to New Zealand maritime industry

Unions rep­re­sent­ing ship crews says the removal of two New Zealand coastal tankers by petrol com­pa­nies is dis­ap­point­ing and has dam­aged New Zealand’s mar­itime indus­try.

Two New Zealand coastal tankers MT Matuku and MT Kokako have been tak­en off the New Zealand coast and are head­ing over­seas, after being reflagged to the Mar­shall Islands reg­istry.

The deci­sion was made by petrol com­pa­nies who are now using a rad­i­cal­ly new and untest­ed mod­el of direct imports on over­seas ves­sels from Asian refiner­ies.

The fuel secu­ri­ty cam­paign led by sev­er­al mar­itime unions and pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies had request­ed the Gov­ern­ment to step in to keep two New Zealand coastal tankers in ser­vice as float­ing stor­age units.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the deci­sion has result­ed in the loss of around 80 sea­far­ing jobs and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young sea­far­ers.

He says there must be imme­di­ate action from the Gov­ern­ment to pre­vent a fur­ther loss of skilled mar­itime work­ers in coastal ship­ping which is in a crit­i­cal state.

The two New Zealand tankers had been char­tered by Coastal Oil Logis­tics Lim­it­ed (COLL) to trans­port petro­le­um prod­ucts from the now closed Mars­den Point Refin­ery to New Zealand ports on behalf of its share­hold­ers BP, Mobil and Z.

The ves­sels were man­aged by New Zealand oper­a­tor Sil­ver Fern Ship­ping Lim­it­ed and owned by inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tor ASP Ship Man­age­ment Group, which char­tered them to COLL.

Mr Har­ri­son says the prime motive for refin­ing and petrol com­pa­nies are returns to share­hold­ers, not what is in the nation­al inter­est of New Zealand.

He says the inter­na­tion­al tanker mar­ket is in tur­moil as the war in Ukraine dis­rupts glob­al trade and sanc­tions take effect.

“The Ukraine war has desta­bi­lized the glob­al ener­gy mar­ket and ship­ping, and we have fur­ther ten­sions in the Asia-Pacif­ic region.”

Mr Har­ri­son says unions want to work with the Gov­ern­ment and the ship­ping indus­try and “Just Tran­si­tion” work­ers into a coastal ship­ping indus­try that helps our domes­tic freight task and decar­bonizes our trans­port net­work through low emis­sion coastal ship­ping.

The cam­paign for fuel secu­ri­ty Save Our Tankers is com­prised of 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.