Seven months ago, the Strait of Hormuz closed. For practical purposes, it remains closed. Before the war, around 85 ships a day passed through it. In early October, the daily count was in single figures, and tankers were being struck at a rate not seen since the conflict began. Brent crude sits above US$100 a barrel. Nobody serious is forecasting a quick return to normal.
New Zealand sits at the far end of that supply chain. Since Marsden Point closed in 2022, we have imported every litre of refined fuel we use, mostly from refineries in South Korea, Singapore and Japan. Those refineries draw most of their crude through Hormuz. We are not a bystander to this crisis. We are a downstream dependant.
So, as another summer and election approaches, it is fair to ask: what has the New Zealand state done with these seven months?
There has been activity, and some credit is due. A ministerial group on economic security and supply chains was stood up in March. A Fuel Response Plan was published on 27 March, with four phases running from "Watchful" to "Protected". Fuel specifications were aligned with Australia's. Additional supply was secured and a strategic diesel reserve is held at Marsden Point. Officials publish stock and shipping figures every week. The tanks have not run dry.
But activity is not strategy. A response plan tells us how we will share out fuel when the shock arrives. It does not tell us how we will be less exposed to the next one. On that question, the one that matters, the cupboard is bare.
Consider the record. We have sat at Phase 1, "Watchful", since March. Our minimum stockholding obligation remains 28 days for petrol, 24 for jet fuel and just 21 for diesel, the fuel that moves our freight, runs our farms and keeps our fishing fleet at sea. The diesel minimum does not rise to 28 days until July 2028. Much of our 90-day International Energy Agency obligation is met not with fuel in New Zealand tanks but with "tickets": contractual claims on oil held in other countries. In a crisis where every nation looks after itself first, a ticket is a promise, not a barrel.
The strategic diesel reserve is available to the Government until August 2027 with the tanks available until November 2027. If it is not needed, the current plan will see the reserve simply being fed back into the normal supply chain instead of being deepened as our world only becomes more volatile.
Meanwhile the national energy strategy was shelved in May. Officials recorded that it was not being progressed because of the focus on the fuel response and other immediate priorities. Read that again. In the middle of the most serious energy shock in half a century, work on how New Zealand secures its energy future was set aside because we were busy with the energy shock. The decision on an LNG import terminal has been pushed past the election. Energy policy has become a grab-bag of campaign promises, more about power bills than resilience.
Allow me to be very clear, this is not, at heart, a criticism of one minister or one party. It is a failure of the national security system.
In August 2023 New Zealand published its first National Security Strategy, Secure Together – Tō Tātou Korowai Manaaki. It runs to 2028. It names economic security as a core national security issue. Its priority is "acting early to prevent national security threats and build New Zealand's resilience". It promised reform of the national security system so that it would look ahead and plan, rather than lurch from event to event. That was the central lesson of the Royal Commission into the Christchurch attacks.
Fuel and energy security is precisely what that strategy was written for. We are a distant, import-dependent trading nation at the end of long and contested sea lines, relying on a handful of foreign refineries for the fuel that powers our economy, our emergency services and our Defence Force. Any competent strategic assessment would have rated the closure of Hormuz as a most dangerous scenario: perhaps not the most likely, but with consequences severe enough to plan against. It happened. Seven months on, the system that was meant to build resilience has produced a rationing schedule and a weekly spreadsheet.
Where is the national security system's assessment of our energy exposure? Where is the cross-government plan, owned at the centre of government, that links fuel stocks, onshore storage, freight, primary industries, our Pacific partners and our defence needs? Where are the targets for physical reserves held here, in New Zealand, rather than on paper offshore? Where is the plan to reduce how much imported liquid fuel we need in the first place, through electrification, biofuels, rail and coastal shipping, framed not as climate policy but as national resilience? And where is the honest public conversation about national security that the 2023 strategy itself promised?
If those plans exist, they have not been shared. If they do not exist, we should be alarmed.
New Zealanders are voting now, and then, as we always do, government agencies will close and we will switch off for summer. Baches, boats, barbecues and long drives to the beach. Petrol and diesel make all that possible, and most of us will give it no thought. That is the comfort of a country that has enjoyed a long holiday from history. But history has not taken a holiday from us. The strait is still closed, ships are still being hit, and our buffer is thinner than most people realise.
Whoever forms the next government should put one simple question to the National Security System in its first week: where is the plan for fuel security and energy resilience, who owns it, and when will New Zealanders see it? The answer should not wait until we are frustratingly queuing at the pump.
Read the full article on The Post website here