2 posts tagged “fuel”

[Cross-posted] In January 2006, I predicted petrol would hit NZ$2 per litre but attributed it more to the Labour Government’s mishandling of New Zealand currency rather than oil prices. Now that the price has come to pass—consider that when I made it, $1·40 per litre was unheard of—I am surprised that no one in the mainstream media or even politics has brought up the parallels with the 1970s and New Zealand’s solution to the fuel crises.
   It seems a very obvious thing to bring up, so I have to question what people are afraid of.
   Responding to the volatility of international fuel prices, the Muldoon administration of 1975–84 embarked on energy projects in an effort to make New Zealand less vulunerable. The various Synfuel projects and energy exploration resulted in an era where New Zealanders drove around in natural gas vehicles, and we even produced our own petrol after converting it from gas.
   By the late 1970s, the New Zealand Government was subsidizing gas conversions and certainly by the early 1980s, many (most?) petrol stations offered compressed natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas alongside petrol and diesel. It was just considered normal.
   New Zealand was saving its foreign exchange and people were driving environmentally friendly cars.
   In 1984, the right-wing policies of the Labour Government saw most state assets relating to the venture sold off to corporations and Muldoon’s venture was passed off as a folly by the new administration, the technocrats of the Business Roundtable and, shockingly, by the National Party itself as it changed leaders.
   Even a bid to market LPG as an environmentally friendly fuel in the 1990s could not save it as the National Government taxed it tremendously—something that was clearly not done in the national interest.
   The winners of the destruction of this energy venture were the corporations, predominantly foreign-owned, buying in to outmoded, socially irresponsible technocratic thinking that has brought a widening rich–poor gap.
   That gap can only increase today with the cost of petrol, now refined offshore and imported by those same corporations, spiralling out of control.
   There’s not a peep from National, now in opposition, to say that it had been right in the 1970s as the only party prepared to shield a little country, so easily swayed by global economic forces, from oil company greed.
   The only logical and cynical conclusion is that National are as big a sell-out of New Zealanders as Labour and Roger Douglas were in the 1980s. And that they are suckers for monetarist theory, all the time closing their minds to the mere possibility that Muldoon—whose policies were adored by successful national leaders such as Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, who did all right with them—might have been right.
   It’s election year—and National’s John Key is silent. Again.
   There’s a lot Sir Robert Muldoon got wrong but on the alternative-energy policies, I can’t find too much fault.
   First, New Zealand is a little country that is too drastically affected by global economics. Even Malaysia in 1997 could not protect itself properly against them. Hence, the technocratic, monetarist movement cannot be left unguarded.
   Secondly, energy prices are unstable and New Zealanders need to be protected against them.
   Thirdly, environmental policies demand that we look at alternative fuels.
   Fourthly, this is something that needs a governmental push to ensure alternatives are available nationwide, or at least somehow create incentives for the infrastructure.
   Faced with these basic facts, the development of our own energy sources for the long term seemed to be the only way forward.
   Sure it was cumbersome and expensive to develop, and there were missteps along the way, but where would we be today? Certainly not paying $2 a litre.
   Little did Sir Robert foresee that it would be so gleefully dismantled by his successors—with the same arguments of efficiency so cleverly used by the technocrats of the Slater Walker era in the United Kingdom.
   In spite of all the English expats here, we bought the arguments hook, line and sinker.
   One would have hoped that today, we would remain shielded from these energy crises offshore, with our fleet of natural gas-powered cars. That we would be leading the world in showing how alternative fuels worked, and foreign countries would be coming to us to license our technology.
   We gave up that lead, that advantage, in 1996 to follow the American example of gas guzzlers and SUVs.
   The General Election is mere months away, this is the hottest issue on the book, and no one dares bring up Muldoon. It’s because no one dares offend a few rich bastards making money off working New Zealanders by bringing up a leader who dared stand up to foreign corporate interests.

Further to an earlier post: so how did the New Zealand Government get us folks, happily driving around in natural gas cars with a huge natural-gas network of stations nationally, back into petrol (or gasoline to our American readers) in 1996? Well, there was this ad:

If you’re going to drive a gas guzzler, shouldn’t the birds and the trees know? Sure, you can use LPG and CNG. But they don’t even smell strong. Let ’em feel the power of petrol—good, healthy petrol that really say you’ve arrived. Let your V8 make your winters warmer. There might not be many tigers left out there, but you can stick them in your tank. Petrol. In 91 and 96 octane.

   OK, so there wasn’t that ad. It was pretty easy though: the National Government had been raising the tax on natural gas for a few years. When that didn’t sway New Zealanders from using domestically made natural gas and not depleting our foreign exchange reserves, they plain turned off the tap.
   In 1996, it was announced to all the gas stations that there would be no more CNG. LPG would continue, but the stations—all with the warm, fuzzy names of Shell, BP, Mobil and Caltex (part-owned by Texaco, which forms the Tex in the name)—were somehow hazy about its availability. Panic ensued. We got rid of our gas-powered Ford Sierra. (You could switch between CNG and petrol. Most converted cars since the late 1970s were dual-fuel, since the hybrid term had not been coined for cars then. Can someone please tell me or any New Zealander why the Toyota Prius is novel?)
   As it turned out, there were still plenty of LPG stations around, but by then we were driving around and letting the birds and the trees know.
   These days, you tend to see cab drivers use LPG but preciously few other people. This is a far cry from the 1980s and early 1990s, when natural gas-powered cars were normal. All of a sudden, the Labour Government thinks E10 is revolutionary. E10, in this country, is not revolutionary.
   Since 1996, we now happily pay 50 per cent more for petrol, polluting our environment and using US dollars to do so. Go, petrol! Yay, OPEC, New Zealand politicians love you!