Radio New Zealand reported this morning that an independent inquiry has concluded that an Oravida associated company was implicated in the rupturing of the oil line that caused something of a crisis for Auckland’s jet fuel supply.
From Radio New Zealand:
The inquiry found “with reasonable certainty” that the pipeline damage was caused by a contractor looking for swamp kauri.
It established a 16-tonne digger was working on the Ruakaka property between 26 and 28 August 2014. The digger had been delivered there so a contractor could look for swamp kauri logs.
Local sawmill Kauri Ruakaka Ltd (KRL), at the time called Oravida Kauri Ltd, owned the digger.
KRL does not look for or extract swamp kauri itself, but sometimes bought kauri logs from the contractor, the inquiry said. It it did not charge for the use of the digger or pay the contractor for his time.
The manager of KRL confirmed to the investigator that he arranged and paid for the digger’s transport on each of the occasions it had visited the property.
The landowner gave the contractor permission to dig, but warned him not to dig in the back paddock, which contained the pipeline.
Readers may recall this event happened just before the election in 2017.
The rumour mill went overboard at the time with suggestions that an Oravida company associated with Judith Collins was involved.
She denied it and said that no Kauri stumps had been pulled out of the area since 2011. It appears she was, ahem, wrong.
But something strange happened:
I wonder what did happened?
And what was the motivation for the company to change its name? And who owns it? Although it appears that Collins’ husband David Wong Tung resigned as a director before the incident.
Parliament should be interesting this afternoon …
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