❚ Editorial: Why was there no plan B?

The pipeline carrying Auckland Airport’s fuel supply from the Marsden Pt refinery is 170km long and less than 28 centimetres in diameter. The failure of this slender – and apparently fragile – piece of crucial infrastructure is a national embarrassment.

The pipeline ruptured last Thursday, after a digger ‘‘scraped’’ and ‘‘cut’’ the pipe. Then, when pressure in the pipe reached a certain level, it burst. The result was disruption to every airline flying in and out of our busiest international airport. Dozens of flights have been cancelled and thousands of people delayed or stranded. It could take days to get back to normal.

There is a sense of deja vu in all this. New Zealand has seen before how failures in small but critical parts of its infrastructure can lead to disproportionate disruption.

In 1998, central Auckland suffered a five-week power cut after four electricity cables failed. The outage started with one old and obsolete cable, which triggered another, and then two more. In 2011, a landslide caused a leak in the Maui gas pipeline north of Taranaki. It was fixed within six days, but the failure is estimated to have cost the economy $200 million.

The interdependence of some of the country’s networks was demonstrated in 2012, when a power cut in a Wellington control centre crippled the entire Auckland railway network.

We haven’t even begun to consider massive disruption caused by large earthquakes, the continued closure of the Manawatu Gorge, or damage caused by weather events – such as the failure of stopbanks protecting Edgecumbe – which are likely to become more frequent.

For all the talk of how infrastructure development fuels national growth, sometimes not enough care is taken to protect the assets we have, even when the risks are known. Lip service is given to building resilience, but the truth is this is expensive.

The vulnerability of the 30-year-old Marsden Pt to Auckland pipeline was highlighted in a report by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in 2012. It seems nothing was done about it.

Refining NZ, which operates the pipeline, says building a back-up would cost $325 million. The Government says this crisis is not its fault and private enterprise should sort it out. So, nothing gets done. But the fact remains that the pipeline is the only source of aviation fuel for Auckland Airport.

There are other ways than a back-up pipeline to secure supply – ensuring the oil company-owned storage depot at Wiri has enough capacity to cover any likely pipeline shutdown would be a reasonable starting point.

But decisions to build or improve facilities are normally decided by economists and planners looking at statistics. A pipeline failure had been identified as a onein-100-year event, and the risk was taken. A one-in100-year event doesn’t actually mean nothing will happen in the next century. The number indicates that in any given year, there is a 1 per cent chance that it will.

When it comes to critical infrastructure, how good are those odds really? With the pipeline crossing private farms, why did no-one think about blokes with diggers?

And why wasn’t there a plan B?

Why did noone think about blokes with diggers?