Refinery forecast may come true

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 3

Refinery forecast may come true

PA Wellington A Wellington consulting engineer, Mr Michael Barnett, who three months ago forecast a $3OOO million cost and 1990 completion for the Marsden Point refinery expansion, said yesterday that events were substantiating his prediction.

The New Zealand Refining Company said on Wednesday that the estimated finishing cost was now $1650 million, up $350 million since the 1981 date, with a completion date of March, 1986.

For eight months until January last year, Mr Barnett was engaged by the project’s main contractor, Badger-Chiyoda, as superintendent of civil engineering contracts.

In June he said his resignation was prompted by a number of matters, including frustration with operating procedures in approving completed works. He said yesterday there would be more cost rises and delays. “They are already more than halfway towards what I said would happen three months ago,” Mr Barnett said.

His $3OOO million, he admitted, was a “guesstimate” based on a cost escalation of two to three on major construction projects.

He said he had made no

direct observations of the project since he left, and his opinions resulted from newspaper reports and discussions with engineers working on the site. The company said industrial disputes were a cause of the extra delay and cost, but yesterday the chairman of the combined site committee, Mr Bill Boyle, said in Whangarei that none of the disputes on the job had added “one extra dollar" to the workers’ pay. Any disputes had been moral or safety issues put before the men because of the nature of the job, he said.

The workers had clearly demonstrated their desire to accomplish the project. The president of the Federation of Labour, Mr W. J. Knox, said yesterday that he believed the eventual cost of the extensions increased with the completion date.

Mr Knox said the “millions spent” by JV2 on overseas labour and resulting court cases in return for the arrival of only 16 British riggers “proved us correct.”

“While there have been strikes and disputes, the Government has had only a weak voice and no control over these contractors.”

Petrol supplies from the Marsden Point refinery may

be under threat from next week.

By Thursday refined petrol was to resume flowing after a month-long closing after a fire in the plant which killed one man and injured another.

But the 60 members of the Stationary Engine Drivers’ Union at the refinery are now refusing to go back to work when the plant restarts until they can settle a three-year-old pay relativity dispute. At a meeting, the men said, “After three years of frustration, and until a concrete offer is made and a final settlement reached, and until an assurance is given by the refining company that the plant is safe, we will refuse to commission crude oil in the plant.” This message was given by Mr Knox, who said he had been told by the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger, that the operators’ request for an exemption to the wage freeze would be “very difficult.”

By next week, port stocks of refined petrol throughout New Zealand will be low in most places, although some has been imported to avoid critical shortages.