What is it?
Every litre of petrol, diesel, and jet fuel used in New Zealand arrives here by ship from overseas. There is no domestic oil production of any scale. There is no refinery. The fuel that runs New Zealand's cars, trucks, farms, planes, and power stations travels thousands of kilometres across open ocean before it reaches a pump near you.
Understanding how that journey works explains why New Zealand is so exposed when something goes wrong anywhere along the chain.
Step 1 — Crude oil is extracted in the Middle East
The journey starts in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, and Qatar pump crude oil from underground reservoirs. This raw crude is not yet usable — it has to be refined into petrol, diesel, and jet fuel before it can power anything.
Most of that crude leaves the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world's oceans. Around 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply passes through this single chokepoint.
The crude is loaded onto Very Large Crude Carriers — some of the largest ships on earth, capable of holding up to 300 million litres of oil — and shipped to refineries in Asia.
Step 2 — Refined in Asia
New Zealand does not buy crude oil and refine it here. Since the Marsden Point refinery closed in 2022, the country has imported only finished products — petrol, diesel, and jet fuel already processed and ready to use.
Those products are made in refineries in South Korea and Singapore. South Korea supplies approximately 48 percent of New Zealand's fuel by value. Singapore supplies around 33 percent. Together they account for around 80 percent of everything New Zealand burns.
The refineries in these countries are large, sophisticated industrial operations. They buy crude from the Gulf, process it into finished products, and sell those products to customers around the world — including New Zealand's five fuel importing companies: BP, Mobil, Z Energy, Gull, and Timaru Oil Services.
The catch is that these Asian refineries depend on Middle Eastern crude. Around 65 percent of all oil processed by Asian refineries originates in Gulf countries. That crude reaches the refineries through the Strait of Hormuz. When the strait is disrupted, the refineries get squeezed on supply — and everything downstream, including New Zealand, gets squeezed too.
Step 3 — Shipped across the Pacific
Once refined, the fuel is loaded onto product tankers — smaller than crude carriers but still substantial ships capable of holding up to 120 million litres of finished product — and shipped to New Zealand.
The voyage from Singapore or South Korea to New Zealand takes approximately 20 to 30 days under normal conditions. This travel time is a critical part of understanding New Zealand's fuel security. When supply chains are disrupted, there is no quick fix. A tanker ordered today will not arrive for a month.
During the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis, major shipping companies including Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to avoid the conflict zone. This adds roughly two to three weeks of additional sailing time on top of the normal voyage — meaning a disruption in the Middle East takes six to eight weeks to fully flow through to supply at New Zealand pumps, not days.
Step 4 — Arrives at import terminals
New Zealand has 10 fuel import terminals around the coast, plus two inland terminals at Wiri in Auckland and Woolston in Christchurch.
The largest terminal is at Marsden Point in Northland — the site of the former refinery, now converted to a fuel import and storage facility. As a deepwater port it can receive the largest product tankers, holding up to 120 million litres per ship. It handles around 40 percent of all fuel imported into New Zealand and is critical for the Auckland market.
Mount Maunganui, Wellington, and Lyttelton are the other major receiving ports, capable of handling medium-sized tankers carrying 40 to 50 million litres. Smaller regional terminals operate at Napier, New Plymouth, Nelson, Timaru, Dunedin, and Bluff.
Once unloaded, fuel is stored in large tank farms at each terminal before distribution begins.
Step 5 — Distributed around the country
From the import terminals, fuel is distributed to petrol stations and bulk customers through a combination of pipelines and road tankers.
The most significant pipeline is the 170-kilometre Ruakaka-to-Auckland Pipeline, which runs from the Marsden Point terminal to the Wiri inland terminal in South Auckland. This pipeline is critical infrastructure — it carries the fuel that keeps Auckland running. Any disruption to it has immediate consequences for the country's largest city.
From the inland terminals and from smaller regional ports, fuel is distributed by road tanker to petrol stations, airports, farms, and industrial customers across the country.
The distribution network has its own vulnerabilities. During the 2026 crisis, concerns were raised about the adequacy of truck and driver capacity to handle surges in demand. Port congestion at Auckland and Lyttelton can slow distribution. Severe weather — cyclones, floods — can cut off road access to regional terminals.
Why this matters
New Zealand sits at the very end of the world's longest fuel supply chain. Every link in that chain — Gulf oil production, Asian refinery capacity, transoceanic shipping, port operations, pipeline flows, road distribution — has to function without interruption for the fuel to reach your car.
In normal times this chain runs smoothly and most New Zealanders never think about it. When something breaks — a war in the Middle East, a natural disaster, a pandemic — the fragility becomes visible very quickly.
The country has no domestic refining capacity to fall back on. It has no meaningful alternative sources that can be turned on quickly. It has no strategic petroleum reserve of its own. It has minimum stockholding requirements measured in weeks, not months.
Every litre of fuel in New Zealand exists because a chain that stretches from the Persian Gulf through Asia across the Pacific to a port near you kept working. That chain is more fragile than most New Zealanders realise — and 2026 has made that impossible to ignore.
Appears in
This building block connects to the following articles in the Kiwi Unity library as they are published.
🧱Why is fuel so expensive right now?→
🧱Is New Zealand about to run out of fuel?→
Sources
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment — About Our Fuel System
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment — Fuel Security Plan, November 2025
RNZ — Where Does New Zealand's Fuel Come From and How Does It Get Here?
Infometrics — Where Does Our Fuel Come From?, May 2025
The Spinoff — New Zealand's Petrol Supply is Terrifyingly Fragile
News Wire — New Zealand's Fuel Security Explained