NZRC - which owns and operates this country’s sole refinery at Marsden Point - posted a net profit of NZ$34 million for the six months to June 2004, compared with the NZ$14 million for the previous half year.

Company chairman Ian Farrant said the results were an outstanding achievement which exceeded the board’s expectations. Revenue, of NZ$118.3 million (NZ$93.2 million for 2003) was much higher than anticipated due to international prices for finished petroleum products being significantly more than crude prices throughout the period.

“The international business environment for refineries improved significantly in 2003-04, with an increased world demand for oil products and many outages of refineries internationally. Refineries worldwide also had to satisfy much higher product quality requirements constraining operations and output in many sites.”

For the first time in 20 years all process units were taken out in May’s major maintenance and catalyst shutdown. After the process units came back onstream, the refinery started producing diesel with a lower sulphur content (500ppm).

Also, NZRC is about halfway through its NZ$180 million Future Fuels Project, which is scheduled to be completed by September 2005, with new low-benzene, low-sulphur and low-level aromatic gasoline products coming into force from January 2006.

“The safety performance of two million hours without lost time, the excellent execution of the major shutdown and the progress achieved with the Future Fuels project are a credit to the quality of the entire NZRC team at Marsden Point,” general manager Thomas Zengerly added.

Shares in the listed company are tightly held, with Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Caltex and Canadian investment company Emerald Capital Holdings owning about 87% of all shares.