Oil is top export to Australia

By CHRIS DANIELS

What is New Zealand's biggest export across the Tasman? Not timber, meat, wool or airline managers. For the year to March 2001 the unlikely winner was crude oil.

High world oil prices pushed the value of crude oil and condensate exports up to $445 million, well ahead of the next most valuable sector in transtasman trade - timber, worth $271 million in the same year.

New Zealand exported 845,000 tonnes of crude oil and condensate to Australia.

But the trade was not one way - NZ imported $920 million of petroleum from Australia in the year to March.

A Ministry of Economic Development spokesman, Lindsay Clark, said although the value of New Zealand's oil exports increased, this was solely because of last year's jump in prices.

NZ produced enough oil to meet 34 per cent of its needs, down from 37 per cent the previous year.

The managing director of Shell Petroleum Mining Company, Lloyd Taylor, said New Zealand did well when oil prices were high. The Marsden Pt refinery was configured to process lower-quality oil, mostly from the Middle East.

The oil produced in New Zealand was of premium quality, so more money was made by selling it overseas, where other refineries would pay more for it.

Mr Taylor could not say what impact the current global instability would have on oil prices. A global economic slowdown would mean less demand for oil, but tension in the Middle East or the Islamic world could push up prices.