Shane Jones & NZ First created the diesel storage crisis – will it burn them in the polls as voters realise this?

ByThe Daily Blog

New Zealand’s diesel vulnerability didn’t just happen — it was a political choice. As the global energy crisis deepens, the question isn’t just whether the Government can respond, but whether voters will realise who made the call that left the country exposed in the first place.

NZ First are in real danger now.

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

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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...

Arguments about the current energy crisis have shifted. It is no longer just about what ministers are doing now. It is also about what they chose not to do when they had the chance.
This morning brought the clearest accountability journalism to this debate. Kate MacNamara in the Herald and Edward Miller in The Post both zero in on the same issue: New Zealand was left more exposed than it needed to be, and ministers were warned about the country’s lack of fuel reserves.

The decision that left New Zealand exposed

The Diesel reserve we scrapped
Kate MacNamara’s Herald investigation published in the Herald today lays out the timeline with forensic insight. After Marsden Point’s refinery closed in 2022, the Labour Cabinet agreed that a 21-day minimum diesel stockholding was not enough. They committed to a government-contracted public reserve of an additional seven days. That’s 70 million litres of diesel to be stored in the old crude tanks at Marsden Point. MBIE issued a request for proposals in late 2023. The plan was to have fuel in the tanks by early 2025.
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, and that’s exactly what this Government is trying to do now. 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.”
Labour bears plenty of blame. It let the refinery close and didn’t fund the reserve plan.
But the decision to kill the reserve — in writing — sits with this Government.. Jones is now hinting at using regional development funds to buy the very diesel storage he scrapped eighteen months ago.

…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!

So when the crisis hits, who do voters blame?

Here’s the political reality.

The IEA said this was a worse energy crisis than the 1970’s 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, NZ First 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 NZ First created the diesel storage crisis – will it burn them in the polls as voters realise this?

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3 Comments

  1. Doesn’t Gaye sound like a complete Karen. Just a cold hearted drop-kick of an individual. I appreciate that’s not a constructive comment towards someone you don’t agree with, but it’s not inaccurate.

    Reply

  2. If the refinery were in operation today, where would it obtain its supply of crude oil? The conversion to refine NZ crude oil was judged to be not economically viable. Good on you for exposing Jones and his lies.

    Reply

  3. Of course Jones and his party s/be burnt at the polls but since their voters are as abysmally stupid as those voting for Nat and Act, then it may not happen? To continuously and spitefully blame an innocent party is sub-human – that’s our ‘boy’ Jones! Looking like some of our media is waking up to the massive corruption, endless lies, distractions etc from this current govt who are without integrity, moral fibre, lack brain matter and in fact are obtuse!
    Now who in the hell is Gaye Ess – should we know or is she yet another who’s only important to herself – a female version of Jones? Of course that is the ugly link. Go Gaye you obnoxious cyberbully. What goes around comes around, you insignificant little twerp!

    Reply