New Zealand’s Fuel Situation
What you’re paying at the pump, what’s arriving by ship, and where every cent of a litre of petrol actually goes.
Where your pump price goes —
About these numbers: the breakdown below uses MBIE’s most recently published weekly report. MBIE’s figures update slowly \u2014 at the time the report was compiled, the average price was lower than what you’re paying this week. Most of the rise since then has gone into the Imported refined fuel component, not taxes (which are mostly flat rates). So the proportions shift: at a higher pump price, the fuel-cost slice grows and the tax slice shrinks as a share.
One litre of petrol, dissected
Note: diesel carries no Fuel Excise Duty at the pump \u2014 road users pay separately via Road User Charges, which apply per kilometre. The diesel breakdown below therefore looks very different from petrol.
AIS view of what’s on the way —
MBIE’s fuel-companies reporting (in the stocks section below) is the authoritative count of ships inbound with fuel for New Zealand. This map is our independent view — every tanker-type vessel we’ve heard from via AIS transponder in the past 48 hours, across a coverage area that takes in the Tasman Sea and the east Australian coast. Green arrows are bound for NZ ports; blue are passing through or serving Australia and the Pacific. Faded arrows were last heard from more than six hours ago. We flag any vessel whose ship-type code is 80–89 (Tanker) or whose destination names an NZ fuel terminal. Collected every 10 minutes.
Recent arrivals at fuel ports last 14 days
Fuel stocks · days of cover —
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Who uses it, where it comes from, who sells it
Daily consumption
Petrol, diesel and jet fuel account for the vast majority of what Aotearoa burns. Heavy-freight diesel and tourism-driven jet fuel have recovered strongly since the pandemic.
Where it comes from
Share of 2025 imported refined fuel by origin. Most cargoes arrive on product tankers from Asian refineries; Kwinana in Western Australia contributes a smaller but steady flow.
Who sells it
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The NZ fuel situation, explained
Why New Zealand imports every litre
In March 2022 Refining NZ (since renamed Channel Infrastructure) announced the closure of the Marsden Point oil refinery and its conversion into a pure import terminal. From that point on, every drop of finished motor fuel used in New Zealand has been refined overseas and shipped here. The last refinery crude charge was processed in April 2022, and the conversion to import-only was complete by mid-year.
The decision was commercial. Marsden Point’s refining margins had collapsed during the pandemic, and Channel’s shareholders judged that continuing to refine was financially worse than importing finished products. Government and some commentators argued the refinery’s strategic value went beyond its balance sheet, but the economics won out.
How fuel gets to your car
Most of NZ’s refined fuel arrives at Marsden Point in Northland, which handles about three-quarters of the total. From there it moves south by coastal shipping to smaller terminals, and by pipeline directly to the big Wiri fuel terminal south of Auckland. Mount Maunganui handles Bay of Plenty and Waikato, Port Taranaki takes LPG and some condensate, and Wellington, Lyttelton and Bluff supply the rest.
From the terminals, fuel moves by truck to the 1,300-odd service stations around the country. Retail brands you recognise \u2014 Z, BP, Mobil, Gull, Caltex, Waitomo \u2014 are mostly either importers themselves or rebranded customers of the three big importers (Z, BP, Mobil).
What’s in the price
Roughly 40 cents of every dollar you spend at the pump is tax. Petrol carries Fuel Excise Duty (FED), which at 70 cents a litre is one of the biggest single components. Diesel doesn’t carry FED \u2014 drivers of diesel vehicles pay for road wear through Road User Charges instead, a per-kilometre fee. On top of those, every litre carries the ACC motor vehicle levy, a small local authority petroleum tax, a cost for emission units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme, and 15% GST on the whole thing.
What’s left after tax is split between the landed cost of the fuel itself (roughly tracking the Singapore gasoline benchmark, the main Asian refined-fuel price), and the distribution and retail margin taken by the importer and the petrol station.
Strategic reserves and the 90-day obligation
As a member of the International Energy Agency, New Zealand is required to hold oil reserves equivalent to at least 90 days of net imports. The requirement was imposed after the 1970s oil shocks and is meant to buy the country enough time to weather a major supply disruption.
With no refinery, all of New Zealand’s reserves are now held as finished fuel (petrol, diesel, jet fuel) rather than crude. Not all of it is physically in NZ; part of the stockholding obligation is met by “tickets” \u2014 contractual rights that let NZ draw down on oil stored in other IEA countries if an emergency is declared. Whether that’s a resilient arrangement in a truly disrupted world is a long-running policy debate.
What can disrupt supply
The things that most obviously threaten New Zealand’s fuel supply are: a major disruption to refineries in Singapore, Korea or Malaysia; shipping bottlenecks in the Straits of Malacca or elsewhere on the South-East Asian tanker routes; industrial action at NZ ports; and the Tasman Sea itself in winter. The closure of Marsden Point removed one layer of resilience \u2014 a working domestic refinery could have shifted feedstocks and output mix if imports were interrupted; an import terminal can’t.
The war in Ukraine, Red Sea shipping disruption in 2023\u201324, and the cascading effects of the COVID-19 logistics crunch all tested the system and revealed vulnerabilities, without (so far) triggering a supply crisis at the pump.
Who sets the price
New Zealand has no price controls on fuel; the pump price is set by retailers within a market that has historically been concentrated around three big importers. The Commerce Commission’s 2019 Market Study into the Retail Fuel Market concluded that importer margins were significantly higher in NZ than comparable countries, and that transparency was poor. The Fuel Industry Act 2020 and subsequent regulatory changes were designed to improve competition and make wholesale pricing more visible. Real-time margin data still isn’t public.
Sources and notes
Pump prices and fuel monitoring: MBIE Weekly Fuel Price Monitoring. Stockholding: MBIE Petroleum and Alternative Fuels Monitoring Reports. Commerce Commission fuel market studies. AIS vessel data: aisstream.io, collected server-side. Retail market shares are estimates for 2025 and refreshed when the Commerce Commission or MBIE publishes new figures. Related reading — our weekly fuel price tracker, the real price of petrol in New Zealand since 2004 and New Zealand’s fuel supply five months into the Hormuz crisis.