Peter MacDonald
New Zealand’s Marsden Point oil refinery was once the crown jewel of the country’s energy infrastructure and a symbol of national self-sufficiency and industrial strength. Built in the 1960s and massively expanded in the 1980s under Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s Think Big programme, the refinery supplied the vast majority of New Zealand’s refined fuels and bitumen for roads. It was a public asset, paid for by taxpayers, and crucial to the country’s energy security.
Yet, in April 2022, after decades of decline and political shifts, the refinery was permanently shut down. Since then, New Zealand has been entirely dependent on imported refined fuels and bitumen: a vulnerability exposed by recent global supply chain disruptions and energy price spikes.
The story of how this strategic asset was lost to foreign ownership and neoliberal policy is a convoluted saga – one that many New Zealanders do not fully understand, partly because of its complexity and partly because of how dominant media and political narratives obscure key facts.
This article pulls back the curtain on the decades-long machinations that led to the demise of Marsden Point, exposing how taxpayers were stripped of ownership, how global financial interests and neoliberal ideology converged to dismantle a vital public asset and why the consequences still threaten New Zealand’s energy sovereignty today.
Muldoon’s Vision: a National Asset Built by Taxpayers
Marsden Point refinery was established in 1961 under the New Zealand Refining Company (NZRC), a joint venture created by the government and major oil companies operating in New Zealand. The refinery began operation in 1964 and by the 1970s it was a linchpin of New Zealand’s fuel supply chain.
In 1981, under Muldoon’s National Government, Marsden Point underwent a major $1.84 billion expansion, financed by massive offshore borrowing, specifically through Eurodollar loans totalling over US$1.25 billion. These loans came primarily from City of London banks and international finance houses entrenched in the global neoliberal financial system. The borrowing was backed by the New Zealand Government, meaning the taxpayer was underwriting this debt, with repayments intended to come from levies on petrol prices, which were successfully being managed at that time. Pay at the pump was accepted by Kiwis as a sensible way to pay back the Marsden Point loans, to keep taxpayer ownership of NZs most strategic asset: energy independence.
This expansion included new refining units and a 170-kilometre pipeline to Auckland, designed to boost New Zealand’s energy self-sufficiency and industrial capacity. For Muldoon, this was a bold investment in national sovereignty and economic independence part of a larger “Think Big” strategy.
The Neoliberal Takeover: How Public Assets Were Privatised
Everything changed with the election of the fourth Labour Government in 1984, led by David Lange and Finance Minister Roger Douglas. This government was heavily influenced by neoliberal economic ideas emanating from think tanks like the New Zealand Business Roundtable, whose membership included influential businessmen such as Bob Jones and Alan Gibbs. These groups advocated for deregulation, privatisation and rolling back state involvement in the economy.
The Business Roundtable and its allies, including Bob Jones’ NZ Party, played a key role in undermining Muldoon’s interventionist model. They argued that “big government” projects like Marsden Point were inefficient and fiscally reckless. This helped pave the way for the sweeping neoliberal reforms known as Rogernomics.
The 1988 Petroleum Sector Reform Act: the Death Knell
In 1988, the Labour Government passed the Petroleum Sector Reform Act, which deregulated the fuel industry and effectively transferred full ownership and control of the Marsden Point refinery to the private sector. The New Zealand Refining Company (NZRC), which had been partially government-owned, became a fully privatised entity controlled by multinational oil companies, such as BP New Zealand, Mobil Oil New Zealand and Shell New Zealand.
To help the newly privatised company adjust to international competition, the government gifted NZRC $85 million over three years: taxpayer money flowing directly into private hands.
What had been a taxpayer-built and publicly backed asset became a private cartel-like entity, where the same multinational companies that controlled petrol retailing in New Zealand also controlled refining, often acting in their own corporate interests rather than the national interest.
The Eurodollar Loans and Global Finance’s Role
The massive loans used to finance the Marsden expansion came from the Eurodollar market: a shadowy, offshore, system dominated by major City of London banks and global financial institutions. This market thrived on lending US dollars outside the jurisdiction of US regulators, allowing opaque and complex borrowing arrangements.
Banks such as Barclays, Lloyds, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Citibank, JP Morgan and others likely participated in these syndicated loans. These institutions were deeply intertwined with the emerging neoliberal ideology that was reshaping Western economies in the 1980s, especially in the UK and US under Thatcherism and Reaganomics.
New Zealand’s borrowing from these international financial centers meant it was drawn into a global economic system that prioritised free markets, privatisation and deregulation often at the expense of national sovereignty and public ownership.
The Role of Neoliberal Think Tanks and Political Actors
The New Zealand Business Roundtable, formed in the early 1980s, was the primary driver of the neoliberal agenda domestically. Bob Jones’ NZ Party directly campaigned against Muldoon’s policies, accelerating his government’s collapse. Alan Gibbs would later be a founding figure in the ACT Party, which continued pushing free-market reforms.
This group’s ideas heavily influenced Roger Douglas and the fourth Labour Government’s policies that led to the dismantling of Marsden Point as a public asset.
From Business Roundtable to the New Zealand Initiative
The legacy of the Business Roundtable lives on in today’s New Zealand Initiative, formed in 2012 through a merger of the Business Roundtable and the New Zealand Institute. This think tank continues to promote neoliberal policies deregulation, corporate-friendly reforms and a market-first approach shaping public discourse and policy to this day.
The Aftermath: Loss of Energy Sovereignty and Import Dependence
Since the refinery’s closure in 2022, a process set in motion decades earlier, New Zealand has become fully dependent on imported refined fuels and bitumen, exposing the country to supply shocks, price volatility and strategic vulnerability. Ironically, New Zealand is now importing coal from Indonesia to keep the lights on all while claiming to pursue ‘green energy’ goals.
Even the media and many politicians frame reopening Marsden Point as unrealistic or backward, despite growing evidence that energy security requires local refining capacity.
Jones Pushes Back and MSM Panics...
Now, Shane Jones is attempting to reverse that damage. He has said unequivocally that the coalition Government is “dismantling net zero brick by brick” and that the nation faces an existential threat of deindustrialisation if these ideological energy policies are not rolled back.
Jones has highlighted that, during the winter of 2024, when New Zealand had record-high power prices, the country imported over a million tonnes of coal to keep the lights on. “This is green madness,” he said, “and it has to stop.”
He also emphasised that New Zealand First and the National Party have at least managed to “ringfence” the farming and agricultural sectors, protecting meat and dairy exports from being crushed under the weight of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
Meanwhile, the mainstream media, still enthralled by climate orthodoxy, ridicules Jones’ common-sense policy direction as backward-looking, even though the numbers tell a different story. Power prices are skyrocketing, forcing business closures in NZ across all sectors of the economy. Fuel insecurity is worsening. And New Zealand’s once proud energy independence is now a distant memory.
The New Face of the Roundtable
Despite the Business Roundtable’s new label, its core agenda remains unchanged: promoting deregulation, corporate consolidation, privatisation and the dismantling of national infrastructure under the guise of ‘efficiency’. Today, it also champions green ideology – not out of environmental concern, but because many of its members have heavily invested in the so-called green economy. Shane Jones now threatens to upend their game, throwing down aces among the winning cards and they are panicking, using their media connections to push back.
It was this same group of elites who manipulated public perception in the 1980s, oversaw the closure of Marsden in the 2020s and now demonise any return to strategic self-reliance.
Conclusion: a Nation Betrayed and a Chance for Redemption
The closure of Marsden Point was not just a business decision: it was the culmination of 40 years of policy betrayal by neoliberal insiders and corporate actors who were gifted a national asset and then proceeded to hollow it out.
Today, Shane Jones stands almost alone in parliament and challenging the dogma of net zero, calling out the ideological cultism that has led to unaffordable power prices and record coal imports all while pretending we are going green.
Reopening Marsden isn’t just a policy debate: it’s a line in the sand between national independence and corporate servitude.
