Mark Freeman
An independent initiative to reopen the Marsden Point oil refinery has been voted down by the refinery company’s shareholders. Despite that, the promoters of the initiative say they had positive discussions with members of the board of directors and may have future engagement with them.
The annual shareholders meeting of Channel Infrastructure, the company which owns the refinery but closed it in 2022, was held in Wellington last week.
Karl Barkley and Daniel Reurich from the independent group Operation Good Oil put forward resolutions to become directors on the board and for the board to cease decommissioning of the refinery and get independent engineering costs for a rebuild. The resolutions gained support from only about 1% of the shareholders.
The company rallied their institutional supporters and received almost double the usual number of share votes, which was a record for a shareholders meeting, Mr Reurich says.
“We fronted up and obviously had them quite worried to the extent they pulled out all the stops to tank our resolutions’ chance of success.
“The CEO was quite insistent that they had just the right mix of directors on the board and they didn’t need any more. They kept repeating this and seemed quite nervous about the prospect of us getting on the board.”
In spite of the failure of the resolutions, Mr Reurich says he and Mr Barkley established rapport with some of the board and management as they questioned them, and they had informal discussions afterwards.
“The board chairman was quite friendly toward us, especially at the end. I think he was quite relieved we weren’t real troublemakers, and, although the questions from our shareholders in attendance were quite spirited at times, the debate was quite robust but mostly friendly.
“[He] did express an interest in getting us connected to the energy security review that [New Zealand First member of Parliament] Shane Jones has been conducting because much of what we had said speaks directly into matters relating to it. He was quite keen to establish further engagement, probably on that basis.”
On the day, more information came out about events leading up to the closure of the refinery, he says.
“It certainly seems that many in the management and the board worked very hard to keep it running but failed to make the finances work. … They were also pretty adamant that refining crude oil at Marsden Point would not restart without it being demanded by the government.”
