Fred99:

 

Does NZ Refining use the presence of the pipeline and infrastructure (Wiri Terminal) to lock out competition?

 

This was put together as part of the Muldoon/Bill Birch National Party "Think Big" projects - where state ownership of production was considered to be the answer, exposing that to commercial competition actively discouraged,

 

I wonder how many airports of similar and larger size elsewhere in the world are effectively locked in to one supplier, and supplied over a pipeline from a single refinery the distance that Marsden Point is from the airport.

The refinery is a "Toll operator", it doesn't own any product, it simply processes it for its clients (The Majors- who are also its controlling shareholders) If the refinery was charging too much, they would simply import refined product directly,

Its not NZR locking out the competition, if anything its the Major fuel companies,

But unless you are going to subsidise a government owned open access refinery pipe and terminal (with billions of taxpayer dollars) so the international Airlines can potentially get marginal cheaper fuel, - I think most people would say the government has higher priorities and the current system works well enough.

NZ's real problem is that it is too small to justify multiple large refineries.....