Liquid Fuels Use in New Zealand

In 2008 a project was started to investigate the liquid fuel supply chain in New Zealand and the completeness of our consumption statistics for liquid fuels.

The key finding of this project was that the approach of surveying only New Zealand's 5 major oil companies was not accurately describing our use of liquid fuels. This is due to the oil companies increasingly moving into a wholesale role and withdrawing from their retail and distribution operations. As this has occurred, independent distributors of fuel have filled the gap in the market by purchasing fuel from the oil companies and delivering this fuel directly to customers. These companies make the final delivery of approximately 19% of New Zealand's diesel and 3% of New Zealand's petrol each year.

Their customers include farms, contractors, transport firms and other businesses. Clearly, not all of this fuel is being used on the roads. This report recommends an annual survey of the distributor companies to capture the deliveries they make, and allocate these deliveries to the appropriate economic sector.

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