She said the biggest concern was that the reticulated drinking water system for livestock ran on fuel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ran out of diesel last week, and we\u2019ve just run out of unleaded this week,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re totally reliant on reticulated water from tanks that we pump water to, so there is no back-up really, if we can\u2019t run our pumps, there\u2019s no water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirk said they were in contact with their rural fuel distributor Fern Energy, which was facing fuel allocation limits from its importers.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, they were not feeding out a lot at the moment, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo yeah, we just have to keep going into town, getting 20-litre containers. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems a bit crazy to be going and burning fuel to go and get more fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirk said she believed primary production would be prioritised, as farming was vital to the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice just to know when the fuel truck is arriving and if they could please allocate our rural tankers some fuel so that they can get it delivered to farms, because we need it, yeah, to keep the country going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuel-hungry farmers being prioritised<\/p>\n
Distributor Fern Energy said it was doing its best to prioritise fuel deliveries based on need.<\/p>\n
The \u014ctautahi-based fuel distributor and storage firm picked up fuel allocated by importers at 11 ports nationwide for its approximately 10,000 primary industry customers nationwide.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Chris Gourley said its fuel allocation had been affected by \u201cartificial demand\u201d, driven by panic-buying and stockpiling of fuel as prices soared.<\/p>\n
He said it was a complex and challenging situation, as it tried to meet its orders.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor farmers, if they\u2019ve got no fuel, they can\u2019t work, so it\u2019s really urgent,\u201d Gourley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make decisions around who we think needs that fuel the most. But it\u2019s the same for all distributors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gourley said its teams understood the frequency of farmers\u2019 fuel orders and usage, and assured they were working hard to get to all their primary sector customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking at which customers are getting close to running out or are dry, and we\u2019re focusing on them first, and we\u2019re working our way through it as best we can.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at our information around how much fuel that farmer\u2019s used in the past, what time of the season we\u2019re in, and we\u2019re working towards getting to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said hotspots where allocations were tight included Hawke\u2019s Bay, but also Nelson, Southland and Christchurch.<\/p>\n
\u201cHawke\u2019s Bay around Napier has been a real hotspot for us in regards to access to fuel out of that port.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got Nelson and Southland, in particular … Christchurch is also quite challenged at the moment. It\u2019s moving, it\u2019s dynamic.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, last week, early in the week, Nelson wasn\u2019t too much of an issue, and now it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recognised it was difficult for farmers in need of fuel, and said that while it was not ideal, those in need may have to seek out their own supply from a truckstop or from other distributors.<\/p>\n
\u201cFarmers that are in arable or farmers that are harvesting or cutting grass, they need fuel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they\u2019re the ones that are really starting to use that fuel quite quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re in that situation where you\u2019ve got no fuel, look for opportunities to potentially fill up the jerry can at the truckstop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panic-buying affecting country\u2019s supply<\/p>\n
Gourley urged the public not to panic-buy petrol, as it was having flow-on effects for the rural sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t need fuel, don\u2019t enter that market and try to stockpile fuel, because it just really does generate problems for everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to all of us, the importers, the distributors, everybody\u2019s trying to balance that fuel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have good supplies coming in, but it\u2019s those spikes when demand lifts, particularly artificial demand, which puts pressure on the network.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said calls via Fern\u2019s hotline increased fourfold in the weeks after the war began.<\/p>\n
The cost of Brent crude oil rose to US$108.50 ($188) per barrel overnight, up more than 6%.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said the biggest concern was that the reticulated drinking water system for livestock ran on fuel. \u201cWe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[180971,806,138,29748,49062,12705,2678,28205,111,139,69,1118,8808,3175,28206,7235,102],"class_list":["post-350124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-allocation","tag-as","tag-business","tag-distributors","tag-dry","tag-farms","tag-fuel","tag-monique","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-running","tag-rural","tag-steele","tag-struggle","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}