Marsden Point Oil Refinery is a 96,000 BPD refinery located at

Marsden Point Marsden Point is a broad, flat peninsula that is the southern head of the Whangārei Harbour entrance on the east coast of Northland, New Zealand, southeast of the city of Whangārei. It is the location of Marsden Point Oil Refinery and the N ...

, Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand. It is the only

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

in New Zealand, and is operated by Refining NZ. The point was named after

Samuel Marsden Samuel Marsden (25 June 1765 – 12 May 1838) was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society, believed to have introduced Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prom ...

. The regional survey map shows it was called Marsden Point in 1907.

History

Increasing demand for petrol and petroleum related products led the Nash Labour government to begin investigating the possibility of constructing an oil refinery. The site at Marsden Point was chosen for the oil refinery due to its location next to a deep water port, low risk of earthquakes, expanses of flat land and closeness to the population centres of the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. Construction of the refinery began in 1962. A consortium of the New Zealand Government contributed the initial

NZ£ The pound (symbol £, £NZ. for distinction) was the currency of New Zealand from 1840 until 1967, when it was replaced by the New Zealand dollar. Like the pound sterling, it was subdivided into 20 shillings (abbreviation s or /) each of 12 pen ...

10 million budget of the refinery. It was officially opened on 30 May 1964. In 1973, the government approved a

NZ$ The New Zealand dollar ( mi, tāra o Aotearoa; sign: $, NZ$; code: NZD) is the official currency and legal tender of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, the Ross Dependency, Tokelau, and a British territory, the Pitcairn Islands. Within New ...

160 million expansion of the refinery, involving the addition of a

fluid catalytic cracker In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shear ...

. Later that year, the first global oil shock, sparked by the

Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egy ...

, raised crude oil prices from US$3 to around US$20 a barrel - however, New Zealand retained reasonable security of supply.

Think Big

A second global oil shock in 1979, this time due to the

Iranian revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

, greatly increased the

price of oil The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel () of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Ref ...

again. This proved to be a catalyst for further expansion of the refinery, under the Muldoon National Governments

Think Big In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...

energy projects. The estimated cost of expansion was $320 million, with a

hydrocracker In petrochemistry, petroleum geology and organic chemistry, cracking is the process whereby complex organic molecules such as kerogens or long-chain hydrocarbons are broken down into simpler molecules such as light hydrocarbons, by the breaking ...

now considered rather than the planned catalytic cracker. In 1981, the expansion began and the government approving a pipeline to

Wiri Wiri is a mostly industrial-commercial focused suburb in Auckland, New Zealand. It was formerly part of Manukau City until the merger of all of Auckland's councils into the ' super city' in 2010. The area was named after the chief Takaanini W ...

, south

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

. A workforce of 5,000 worked on the expansion, which was by now expected to cost $1.55 billion. Strikes during the project led to the introduction of the ''Refinery Expansion Projects Dispute Act'' by the Muldoon government. An inquiry into the strikes and the governments' reactions to them followed. In 1985, the refinery shut down for five months for maintenance work on the old refinery. The project was completed in 1986, two years behind schedule and at a final cost of $1.84 billion.

Reform and privatization

Following the election of the reformist

Fourth Labour Government The Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand governed New Zealand from 26 July 1984 to 2 November 1990. It was the first Labour government to win a second consecutive term since the First Labour Government of 1935 to 1949. The policy agenda o ...

in 1984, the ''Petroleum Sector Reform Act'' was introduced. This Act deregulated the petroleum industry, with 1,500 workers expected to lose their jobs. The Refinery assets were transferred by the Government to the New Zealand Refining Company Limited, a consortium of the five major petrol retailers. BP,

Mobil Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name, which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999. ...

and

Z Energy Z Energy is a New Zealand fuel distributor with branded service stations. It comprises some of the former assets of Shell New Zealand and Chevron New Zealand. Shell left the New Zealand fuel distribution business in April 2010, selling its ope ...

are currently major shareholders. The Government injected $80 million to enable the company to adapt to the new environment. A major efficiency drive was launched to cut operating costs.

Production

The refinery uses a medium-

sour The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor ...

blend of

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

, nearly all of which is imported. Most crude oil produced in New Zealand is light-

sweet Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones ...

and is exported to refineries in Australia. Marsden Point produces 70 per cent of New Zealand's refined oil needs, with the rest being imported from Singapore, Australia and South Korea. Crude oil bought by Marsden Point Oil Refinery is shipped to the deep-water port at Marsden Point, near Whangarei for refining into transport fuels for New Zealand. The Marsden Point Oil Refinery is responsible for supplying: * around 85% all of the country’s jet fuel * around 67% of diesel * around 58% of all petrol * all fuel oil for ships

Refinery-Auckland Pipeline (RAP)

A 168 kilometer (104 mile) underground pipeline connects the refinery to the

Oil Terminal in

. The pipeline is 25 centimeters (10 inches) in diameter and transports petrol, diesel and jet fuel at up to 400,000 litres (105,669 US gallons) per hour. Supply was halted for pipeline repairs in September 2017 after an

excavator Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper (or stick), bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression fro ...

damaged the pipeline on a rural property near Ruakaka, leading to jet fuel shortages and flight cancellations at

Auckland Airport Auckland Airport is the largest and busiest airport in New Zealand, with over 21 million passengers in the year ended March 2019. The airport is located near Māngere, a residential suburb, and Airport Oaks, a service hub suburb south of the ...

Planned closure

In August 2020, Refining NZ announced that it was considering importing refined fuels, and closing the Marsden Point refining operation. In November 2021 Refining New Zealand confirmed that the refinery would shut down in April 2022.

References

External links

The New Zealand Refining Company Ltd T/A Refining NZ

Marsden Point
(from Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand) * http://www.steelpipe.co.nz/projects/marsden-point-to-wiri-pipeline/ {{coord, -35.840986, 174.494734, type:landmark_region:NZ, display=title Whangarei District Oil refineries in New Zealand Buildings and structures in Whangārei