White Hat NZ Patriot (@GetTheFacts)

This must be caused by people taking more fuel than they currently need. Shane Murray 1h · People have been messaging me about their diesel trucks coughing and dying. Filters blocked. Injectors fouled. Engines cutting out after a fill up. Loss of power. Black smoke. The whole lot. Some of you already know what diesel bug is. Most people don't. Here is what happens. Diesel is hygroscopic. It absorbs moisture from the air. Water gets into your tank. Water is heavier than diesel so it sinks to the bottom. Two things then happen and both are bad. First the water gets drawn into your fuel system. It hits your injectors. Modern common rail diesel systems run at pressures up to 30,000 psi. Injector tolerances are measured in microns. Water does not compress. It destroys precision components that cost thousands of dollars to replace. Second the water creates the conditions for microbial growth. Bacteria and fungi that live at the diesel-water interface. They feed on hydrocarbons. They produce slime and sludge. That slime blocks your filters. Your fuel pump starves. Your engine stumbles and dies. This is called diesel bug. And the fuel companies in New Zealand have openly admitted it is a problem. Hyundai New Zealand's national sales manager Tom Ruddenklau said it publicly. The issue with diesel bug is one that is purely related to the fuel supply not vehicle technology. The fuel companies openly admit to the issue. He also explained the mechanism. As fuel storage tanks at service stations get empty the risk of condensation building up in the tank gets higher. Water is heavier than fuel so the risk of water getting into the vehicle's tank when the storage tank gets low is greater. So when tanks run low you are most at risk of getting contaminated fuel. Now here is where this gets much bigger than diesel bug. New Zealand right now is burning through fuel stocks at a rate that has the government publishing emergency updates twice a week. The Strait of Hormuz. The conflict in the Middle East. Refinery capacity in Singapore, South Korea and Japan being wound back. The last shipments from the Gulf expected to reach New Zealand around mid-April. Diesel hit a low of 18.1 days in-country cover last week. The government held an unscheduled press conference to calm people down. The Wareing Group runs 270 trucks across the South Island. Their drivers have been experiencing fuel outages. Fern Energy is rationing rural deliveries based on need. Diesel surged 85 percent in 28 days. More than double the petrol price rise. And why are we this exposed. Because Marsden Point refinery closed in 2022. New Zealand went from having a domestic refinery to being 100 percent import dependent overnight. We now import all our refined fuel from Singapore, South Korea and India. Every drop. No domestic backstop. In 2024 Shane Jones scrapped Labour's plan for a government-owned emergency diesel reserve of 70 million litres. He called it doodling on a Cabinet paper. That reserve would have been roughly seven extra days of supply on top of the mandated minimum. Right now the government's Phase 1 response to the worst oil shock in a generation is a fuel saving tips website. http://fuelsavingtips.govt.nz I am not making that up. The trucks that stock your supermarket shelves run on diesel. The ambulances. The tractors growing the food. The machinery harvesting it. The ships exporting it. There is no substitute. You cannot put an EV truck under a 40-tonne load and send it to Invercargill. If you are seeing diesel problems in your truck right now there are two things happening at once. The contamination risk goes up when tanks run low and tanks all over New Zealand are running lower than they have in years. And the fuel coming in is coming from stressed and stretched refinery chains cutting corners to keep volumes up. Check your pre-filters. Change your fuel filter if you haven't recently. If your truck cuts out after a fresh fill get a sample tested before you spend money on injectors. And remember this is a country that closed its only refinery and cancelled its emergency reserve and is now being run on a website about saving fuel tips. Sources: http://autotrader.co.nz/news/diesel-contamination-sparking-debate http://newsroom.co.nz/.../truckies-worry-as-diesel-slows... http://thespinoff.co.nz/.../why-diesel-prices-are... http://mbie.govt.nz/.../fuel-supply-disruption-response http://rnz.co.nz/.../fuel-crisis-rural-distributors... #DieselBug #DieselContamination #NewZealand #FuelCrisis #Christchurch #Trucking #FuelSecurity #MarsdenPoint #DieselPrices #NZPolitics #FuelShortage #StraitOfHormuz #ShaneJones #EnergyResilience #Trucks #RuralNZ #FuelQuality #CommonRailDiesel #NZEconomy #FuelAlert