The ceasefire between the US and Iran was announced Wednesday. Oil prices dropped 16 percent overnight. Markets rallied. For a moment it felt like the crisis was over.
It isn't.
Petrol is still above $3 a litre nationwide. Diesel has been more expensive than 91 octane at some stations — something that has never happened in New Zealand before. Supply chains that were severed weeks ago take weeks more to heal. And the ceasefire is only two weeks old.
So where does New Zealand actually stand on fuel supply? And how exposed are we really?
Here's the full picture.
How New Zealand gets its fuel
New Zealand imports 100 percent of its refined fuel. Every litre of petrol, diesel, and jet fuel used in this country arrives by ship from overseas refineries.
Around 80 percent of that fuel comes from refineries in South Korea and Singapore. Those refineries buy their crude oil primarily from Saudi Arabia and the UAE — crude that travels to them through the Strait of Hormuz.
When the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial shipping after the US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February 2026, the entire chain seized up. The refineries in Asia that supply New Zealand got squeezed on crude. They processed less. They exported less. And New Zealand — at the very end of the world's longest fuel supply chain — felt it immediately.
This is not a short-term problem that fixes itself the moment the ceasefire holds. It is a structural exposure that has been building for years and is now fully visible.
Marsden Point — again
It keeps coming back to this.
Until 2022 New Zealand had its own oil refinery at Marsden Point in Northland. It wasn't a complete solution — it still processed imported crude — but it gave the country a meaningful buffer. It could process crude from multiple sources. It could hold larger stocks of raw material. And it sat between the global market and your petrol station.
In 2022 it was closed. The owners — Ampol, Z Energy and BP — converted the site into an import terminal. It now stores finished fuel rather than processing crude. There is no domestic refining capacity in New Zealand. None at all.
In the current crisis, with shipping disrupted and Asian refineries under pressure, the government has moved to convert some of the old crude storage tanks at the Marsden Point site into diesel storage. It is the right idea. It is also several years too late.
How much fuel does New Zealand actually have?
The government has been publishing fuel stock figures twice a week since the crisis began. As of 1 April 2026, New Zealand had 61.9 days of petrol, 51.5 days of diesel, and 50.1 days of jet fuel — when you include both onshore stocks and tankers already on their way here.
Those numbers sound reassuring. They need context.
The minimum stockholding obligation — the legal minimum fuel importers must hold — is 28 days of petrol, 21 days of diesel, and 24 days of jet fuel. New Zealand is comfortably above those minimums right now.
But there are two important caveats.
First, the total figures include fuel on ships that are still at sea and have not yet arrived. If a tanker is diverted, delayed, or cannot be replaced, those numbers drop quickly. The Strait of Hormuz was running at 125 ships a day before the crisis. During the peak of the conflict, it was running at around four a day. That pipeline is not instantly repaired even if the ceasefire holds.
Second, onshore figures — fuel actually in tanks in New Zealand — tell a more sobering story. In late March, MBIE data showed diesel onshore stocks falling to levels that prompted the government to scramble for additional shipments. The figures were later revised upward, but the scare illustrated exactly how thin the margins actually are.
The four-phase plan
The government has a formal framework for managing a fuel shortage. It is called the Fuel Response Plan 2026, and it has four escalating phases.
Phase 1 — where New Zealand is now — means the market is operating normally, prices are rising, and the government is monitoring stocks and providing information. No restrictions on purchasing.
Phase 2 means supply is tightening. The government starts directing how fuel is distributed and begins prioritizing critical services.
Phase 3 means supply is genuinely constrained. Stricter distribution rules kick in, purchases may be limited, and essential services are protected first.
Phase 4 — the most serious — means rationing. Life-preserving services get priority. Everything else gets what is left.
New Zealand has never gone past Phase 1 in a peacetime crisis. The government has been clear that it will not introduce restrictions before there is genuine evidence of shortage — partly because panic buying itself creates the shortage it is meant to prevent.
That is the right instinct. But it does mean the line between Phase 1 and Phase 2 could move faster than many people expect if shipments stop arriving on schedule.
The ceasefire — what it does and doesn't fix
The two-week ceasefire announced between the US and Iran on 9 April 2026 is genuinely good news. Oil prices fell sharply on the announcement. Shipping companies are beginning to assess whether vessels can safely transit the Strait of Hormuz again.
But a ceasefire is not the same as a resolution.
Even if the Strait fully reopens tomorrow, it takes 20 to 30 days for a tanker to travel from the Persian Gulf to New Zealand. The refineries in South Korea and Singapore that were running at reduced capacity need time to rebuild their crude stocks and ramp back up. The fuel that left those refineries in the weeks of reduced production simply does not exist. It cannot be conjured back.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has been direct about this: even in the best-case scenario, it will be several weeks before New Zealand pump prices begin to reflect lower global oil prices. The supply chain disruption takes longer to unwind than it took to create.
And the ceasefire itself is fragile. It is two weeks old. Both sides have reasons to reopen hostilities. The world was running at 125 ships a day through the Strait before the conflict. It could return to four a day very quickly if the situation deteriorates.
What other countries did — and what NZ didn't
The global response to this fuel supply crisis has been striking. Australia suspended fuel quality standards and chartered emergency fuel from the US Gulf Coast. More than 500 Australian petrol stations ran dry. Victoria and Tasmania made public transport free to reduce fuel demand. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Sri Lanka rationed fuel to 15 litres per vehicle per week. Pakistan moved to a four-day working week in the public sector. The International Energy Agency triggered its largest ever emergency stock release — 400 million barrels — to try to stabilize global supply.
New Zealand's response has been more measured. The government aligned fuel specifications with Australia's to widen import options. It is releasing IEA oil tickets to contribute to the collective response. It is publishing stock data twice a week. It has provided targeted financial support to lower- and middle-income families.
What New Zealand has not done is implement demand reduction measures — no public transport incentives, no speed limit changes, no vehicle use guidance — partly because many of the policy levers that would enable that response were removed over the past two years.
Whether New Zealand's approach has been appropriately cautious or insufficiently urgent is a genuine debate. What is not in debate is that the country is structurally more exposed than most of its peers — with no refinery, thin stockholdings, and a supply chain that runs entirely through a single global chokepoint.
The bigger picture
The fuel supply crisis of 2026 has exposed something New Zealand has been building toward for decades.
The country sits at the far end of the world's longest fuel supply chain. It imports every drop of fuel it uses. It closed its only refinery in 2022. Its minimum stockholding obligations — introduced only in January 2025 — were designed for short-term, orderly disruptions, not a shooting war in the world's most critical energy chokepoint.
New Zealand has IEA oil tickets — paper commitments from the US, UK and Japan to supply emergency barrels if needed. But as the University of Auckland pointed out when the crisis began, paper tickets are a long way from a tanker full of oil. If those countries are simultaneously stressed by the same global disruption, the tickets are worth considerably less than they appear.
The ceasefire is welcome. The structural vulnerabilities it has exposed are not going away when the crisis ends.
Q&A — Common questions
Article building blocks
Each part of this topic has its own dedicated article. Explore the ones that interest you.
🧱 Marsden Point →
🧱 The Strait of Hormuz →
🧱 How fuel gets to New Zealand →
🧱 New Zealand's fuel stockholding →
🧱 Oil prices →
Sources
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment — Middle East Conflict and New Zealand's Fuel Stocks
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment — Fuel Stocks Update, April 2026
New Zealand Government — Fuel Response Plan 2026
Reserve Bank of New Zealand — OCR on Hold at 2.25%, April 2026
RNZ — Luxon, Willis Caution Economic Effects Will Continue Despite Ceasefire
University of Auckland — Global Oil Chokepoint Shows Up Fragile Fuel Security
Wise Response Society — NZ Fuel Supply Directly Threatened by Hormuz Crisis
The Spinoff — The New Zealand Fuel Crisis Laid Bare in Nine Simple Charts
1News — Is New Zealand Going to Run Out of Fuel?
1News — Global Oil Prices Fall — How Long Until NZ's Petrol and Diesel Follow?