Price of Motunui petrol

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 23

Price of Motunui petrol

PA Wellington A claim that synthetic petrol from the Motunui plant would cost about twice as much as imported natural petrol was “disturbingly inaccurate,” the Minister of Energy, Mr Tizard, has said. He was commenting on reported remarks about the price of synthetic petrol by an Australian, Professor David Trimm, who said the plant was likely to produce Eetrol at 55c to 60c a litre efore tax. Mr Tizard said the landed price of imported regular gasoline was about 50c a litre, and the landed price of premium was a few cents higher. Gasoline from Motunui would be somewhere between the two in quality. “This Government has adopted the previous Government’s intention of selling the synthetic petrol at the normal gasoline price," he said. Professor Trimm, head of the School of Industrial Engineering and Industrial Chemistry at the University of New South Wales, said that the building of a largescale plant using a new process was a “massive gamble.” Since the decision to build the Motunui plant was taken there had been some minor: improvements in the methanol-to-gasoline process. The Motunui plant could probably be improved as the improvements became available, he said, but they were not likely to reduce costs. Professor Trimm said people in the synthetic fuels field were in awe of what New Zealand was doing. The world would be looking toward synthetic fuels soon after the year 2000. New Zealand was the only country where synthetic fuels were taken seriously at the moment. Australia would watch the results of the Motunui plant and could well build similar plants using its ample natural gas and coal reserves.