LPG management criticised

Press, 17 August 1984, Page 20

LPG management criticised

PA Auckland A Fiji businessman has criticised liquefied petroleum gas management in New Zealand, alleging that producers had known “for years” about potential markets in the Pacific. Mr Roger Probert, chairman of the Fiji Gas Company, said he first attempted to get LPG supplies more than 10 years ago when surplus gas was burnt at Marsden Point. More recently, he said in Auckland in an interview, his company had talks with the Shell BP Todd consortium for gas to deliver to the Pacific Island nations. However, the deal failed, he said, because the consortium’s price was “not in keeping with the world mar-

ket price.” His company had continued to draw supplies from Bass Strait, between mainland Australia and Tasmania, although this involved a long and costly shipping haul. Fiji Gas, he said, delivers between 20,000 and 30,000 tonnes of LPG to the Islands, about the amount being flared to waste from the Maui and Kapuni fields. “I have been coming to New * Zealand for many years and producers have known we’re interested in getting gas,” he said. “But we’ve never been able to get any definite answers and the only firm offer we had didn’t measure up on the world gas market.”