Key players from New Zealand’s oil and transport industries will discuss the vexed question of New Zealand’s fuel
quality at an Auckland Regional Council hosted Clean Air Forum next week.
ARC Environmental Quality director Kerry Connolly says the forum, on Friday 31 August, is timely with all parties likely
to be making submissions to the Government’s fuel specifications review in the near future.
“The forum also comes in the wake of an often heated debate over attempts by the ARC and others to bring cleaner diesel
to the Auckland market,” Mr Connolly says.
“That fuel quality is a contributing factor to air quality is undeniable so the issue is not going to go away.”
Mr Connolly is delighted that chief executives from all New Zealand’s oil companies and the New Zealand Refinery Company
along with other key stakeholders have accepted the ARC’s invitation to attend the forum.
“We realise that the way forward in environmental management is to establish working relationships with key stakeholders
and we want to use the forum to find some common ground on these issues and form a solid basis for solving some of the
problems,” he says.
“I’d like to think the forum will be more about the things we agree on than those we don’t. Ideally we’d would like to
come away with a list of solutions upon which all parties can agree in principle.”
Forum participants will hear about the potential for progress through consensus from the forum’s keynote speaker Michael
Kenny who is the Executive Officer of the California Air Resources Board.
“The Board enjoys a reputation in the United States as the nation’s leading agency in improving air quality and we
believe the key players in New Zealand and Auckland’s air quality can learn from CARB’s successes,” Mr Connolly says.
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