Terms of Reference
[ Last Updated 13 January 2006 ]
The Government considers that it is important to carry out a review of the recent failures of Mercury Energy Ltd's cables to the Auckland CBD in order to establish what happened, why and lessons for the future. To this end the Government has established a Ministerial Inquiry to publicly inquire into and report to the Minister of Energy before the end of June 1998 on the following questions:
- What caused the power supply, and in particular, the power cables into the central business district of Auckland, to fail? Factors to be considered include:
- Organisational issues, including all aspects of governance structures, accountability arrangements and customer contracts
- Risk management and contingency planning
- Technical factors, including network design and quality, operating standards and practices, maintenance standards and asset management policy and practices, and the weather
- Any other relevant factors
- In light of the cable failure, to recommend changes to ensure that security risks relating to Mercury Energy's distribution lines are managed efficiently. Any recommendations should take into account the costs and benefits of any changes, including the costs of alternative measures to avoid or insure against outages
In undertaking the review the Inquiry shall:
- as soon as possible publish a report prepared by technical experts commissioned by the Inquiry on the technical factors in question 1 above;
- call for public submissions following publication of the technical report;
- not determine issues related to liability, breach of law, or compensation
- decide its own procedure.
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