Govt steps in over airport fuel crisis

The Government has offered to help oil companies struggling with an aviation fuel crisis that threatens to disrupt air travel out of Auckland for the next "10 days to two weeks".

The problem arose after the pipeline which carries the jet fuel from the Marsden Point refinery was cut, by a digger lifting swamp kauri on a farm at Ruakaka, near Whangarei, the New Zealand Herald reports.

Prime Minister Bill English told reporters on the campaign trail in Botany today that he had instructed ministers to "offer all assistance that the Government can" to restore aviation fuel supplies.

Auckland Airport spokesman Simon Lambourne said 23 flights had been cancelled in the past 24 hours.

NZ Refining spokesman Greg McNeill said the pipeline was likely to be shut down for at least several days, and two engineers were flying in from Canada tomorrow.

Mobil Oil spokesman Rob Fitzgerald said the refining company had told oil companies that it would take "between 10 and 14 days" to restore the fuel supply.

Petrol and diesel can be trucked into Auckland by tanker, but the airport depends entirely on the pipeline and is now running out of stored supplies of aviation fuel.

Andrew McNaught of Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited, representing the customers of the refinery, said the industry was working proactively to minimise the impact of the pipeline outage.

He said the issue was particularly focused on Auckland Airport as it was exclusively supplied with jet fuel by the pipeline.

McNaught said this was the first time that the refinery to Auckland pipeline had experienced a fault.

Passengers on an Emirates flight to Dubai this afternoon were told this morning that the flight has been diverted via Christchurch for refuelling.

Lambourne said passengers scheduled to fly today should check their travel details or contact their airline for more information.

"It will impact on some flights," he said.

He could not confirm whether all flights would stop in at Christchurch or be rerouted to other centres to fuel up.

That was up to individual airlines, he said.

Refining NZ spokesman Greg McNeill said the issue began on Thursday when a leak was spotted in the pipeline that supplies aviation fuel from Marsden Point to Wiri, South Auckland, near the airport.

The 170km pipeline is constantly monitored and on Thursday a drop in pressure was noticed.

A helicopter was put up to survey the pipeline and the leak was identified on farmland at Ruakaka, about 8km from the Marsden Point refinery.

 

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