Transport unions renew calls for Marsden Point refinery to be restarted

Two of New Zealand’s main trans­port unions are urg­ing the Mars­den Point refin­ery be returned to func­tion­ing sta­tus, if nec­es­sary through Gov­ern­ment own­er­ship.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand and the Rail and Mar­itime Trans­port Union togeth­er rep­re­sent thou­sands of work­ers in the ports, ship­ping and rail sec­tors.

The pri­vate­ly owned Mars­den Point facil­i­ty ceased refin­ing crude oil ear­li­er this year but is still intact and is being mod­i­fied into a stor­age facil­i­ty.

Rail and Mar­itime Trans­port Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Wayne But­son says the clo­sure of Mars­den Point refin­ing oper­a­tions has left New Zealand exposed.

He says the clo­sure was dri­ven by the short term inter­ests of fuel com­pa­nies who owned the refin­ery, and has under­mined fuel secu­ri­ty for New Zealand.

Iron­i­cal­ly, prof­its for fuel com­pa­nies from fuel refin­ing have soared this year.

Mr But­son says Mars­den Point could be upgrad­ed to refine New Zealand pro­duced crude oil, and this could keep essen­tial ser­vices func­tion­ing in the case of emer­gency.

He says both Unions have active­ly pro­mot­ed rail and ship­ping trans­port modes, which are com­par­a­tive­ly low emis­sion.

“We need low emis­sion trans­port and decar­boniza­tion, but we also need fuel secu­ri­ty in the short to medi­um term tran­si­tion peri­od.”

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the volatil­i­ty of glob­al fuel prices and sup­ply chains are mak­ing the clo­sure of the refin­ery look even more of a bad idea.

“Sup­ply chain dis­rup­tion is the new nor­mal and ongo­ing COVID, glob­al con­flict and secu­ri­ty threats means New Zealand is dan­ger­ous­ly exposed.”

He says New Zealand is now com­plete­ly depen­dent on import­ed refined fuel being shipped into New Zealand ports by over­seas tankers.

Two New Zealand flagged and crewed tankers were tak­en out of ser­vice recent­ly due to the shut­down of Mars­den Point refin­ery, fur­ther reduc­ing New Zealand’s fuel secu­ri­ty.

“Our fuel reserves are small com­pared to many oth­er coun­tries and from what we have seen in the last cou­ple of years, the sup­ply chain is very vul­ner­a­ble to shocks.”

The seri­ous sit­u­a­tion being faced in Europe due to dis­rup­tion of gas sup­plies from Rus­sia was a warn­ing of how quick­ly events could unfold, he says.

Mr Har­ri­son says there are a num­ber of poten­tial options, includ­ing part or full Gov­ern­ment own­er­ship of the refin­ery.

He says the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment had kept two Aus­tralian refiner­ies open by under­writ­ing them, which was a spe­cif­ic response intend­ed to ensure fuel secu­ri­ty.