Shane Jones and NZF created the diesel storage crisis – will it burn them in the polls as voters realise this?

NZ First are in real danger now.

To date, they have trawled the sub 5% threshold with conpiracy theories and culture war boomer malice.

This is a NZ First Hate Troll, read her to get a gist of the malice of these redneck thugs…

…charming hu?

This culture war spite however will burn off as the enormity of what running out of Diesel will do to NZ, especially now that Shane Jones ands NZ First’s culpability has been laid bare,after blistering articles were published in The Post and NZ Herald that clearly point to Shane Jones being the one who screwed up...

It never happened. First, Labour left the capital costs (in the region of $100 million) unfunded. And while the incoming coalition made plenty of noise about fuel security, Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones then killed off the plan in a July 2024 Cabinet Paper.

His reasoning was laid bare in the document: “Procuring reserve diesel is expensive. At current prices, 70 million litres would cost $84 million. As the current fiscal environment constrains our ability for new capital investment, I seek your agreement to stop work on securing tank storage and purchasing diesel through this arrangement.”

The paper acknowledged the consequences plainly: “This will prolong our vulnerability to a diesel supply disruption until potentially 2028 but this is unavoidable without committed funding.”

That $84 million figure — roughly $1.20 a litre stripped of taxes and levies — has been, as MacNamara puts it, “thoroughly flattered” by a Middle East war that has doubled the price. The price tag that ministers balked at last year now looks cheap. And now the country is scrambling without the reserve it rejected.

After axing the plan, MacNamara explains that Jones commissioned fresh consultants (Castalia and Enerlytica) who duly reached the same conclusion their predecessors had: diesel would likely run short in a 90-day disruption. The Government’s response was to push the obligation onto fuel companies, requiring them to build reserves to 28 days. The deadline? July 2028. That pushed the problem onto industry but gave them a major extension of time.

MacNamara’s summary is withering: “For years, New Zealand’s diesel dilemma has been whether to pay for extra stockholdings for use in the case of emergencies or risk it. So far, we’ve been risking it.”

Edward Miller’s companion piece in The Post today is the insider’s version of the same story. Miller fought from the union movement side to keep Marsden Point’s refining capacity operational, and his account of the decisions that followed its closure carries particular weight.

He notes that MBIE itself verified that the refinery could have been retained as emergency resilience capacity: producing fuel inefficiently but indefinitely in a worst case, enough to keep ambulances and food trucks running. The owner of Marsden Point is Channel Infrastructure, and its CEO Rob Buchanan told Newstalk ZB last week that two recommissioned crude tanks at Marsden Point — holding some 90 million litres — could be ready in two to three months. Jones had this option available. Miller points out that he did not take it.

Miller’s verdict is blunter still: “You can’t call the insurance company after you’ve crashed your car and request a policy. Your best bet might then be to blame the other driver, which may help explain why Jones has been particularly vocal of late on the question of who is responsible for our precarious fuel security position.”

Miller’s retrospective account of the diesel reserve decision is damning in the same way MacNamara’s is, but sharper: “Having been told that increased diesel storage was the cheapest option to safeguard resilience, Jones’ failure to pursue that option in the last year has left us dangerously exposed.”

 

…many of us who pay attention to politics couldn’t understand why Jones was blaming Labour for Marsden Point when it was NZF that screwed up the diesel storage problem!

Here’s the political reality.

The IEA said this was a worse energy crisis than the 1970s oil shock and Ukrainian War COMBINED!

The worst case scenarios are now the only scenarios and the damage that will cascade through the economy to the community to the society are beyond anything we’ve ever had before.

When people get hit the hardest by these events  the culpability of Shane Jones and NZ First in causing this storage mess alongside National’s refusal to act will become magnified and vilified.

People want the Government to help them the way Jacinda and Grant did, they don’t want to get a kick in the guts and told to harden up.

You thought you hated Jacinda post-Covid? Wait until we run out of diesel!

Oh will you hate Shane Jones, NZFirst and National with a special kind of anger then.

The first duty of the State is to protect the people, not betray them.

Shane Jones and NZF created the diesel storage crisis – will it burn them in the polls as voters realise this?