For context on oil supply to NZ published by the nz govt, viz the US-Iran war.

The #NZ government has committed to earmarking #oil supply for commercial truck shipping at all costs, which I guess is what diesel is.

This confusing metric is essentially "negative price". So the plummeting "number of cents down" means the price is skyrocketing.

New Zealand, relative to other countries is extremely reliant on trucking and government subsidy of shipping via highway shipping infrastructure.

~ https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/energy-statistics-and-modelling/energy-statistics/weekly-fuel-price-monitoring

"
The importer margin is calculated as follows:

Importer margin = Adjusted retail price โ€“ Taxes โ€“ Importer cost

Where:

Adjusted retail price is the national average advertised retail price for a fuel (the โ€˜board priceโ€™), adjusted to reflect the actual price paid by consumers.
Taxes includes direct taxes and levies and costs paid to the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
Importer cost reflects the cost of purchasing the fuel in Singapore and shipping it to NZ.
"

Weekly fuel price monitoring | Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment carries out weekly monitoring of importer margins for regular petrol and automotive diesel. This data is updated weekly, using the previous week's data.

@screwlisp Seems a rather idealistic model. Where's the random input based on Trump's latest war?

@screwlisp Well of course it's upside down.

But are they unaware the country's an island, & ferries or something would be a lot more efficient?

@mdhughes I guess sea freight implies sea ports as infrastructure, whereas NZ went for oil trucking ("inland ports") infrastructure.

@mdhughes on this point, I used to know (maybe, worked for at one point. Never accept a "data science" job) one of NZ's trucking monopoly hereditary oligarchs (not what the company that hired me "did").

On the oil topic, I recall they maximized profitability by requiring truckers drive at the minimum legal speed limit, which is the most oil efficient, and firing truckers who did not drag out their long haul driving.

@screwlisp In the US we just give truckers meth & have them drive hard & fast, no matter who it rolls over, so long as everything's restocked immediately even in the middle of a shithole desert.

Which is how we destroyed Boris Yetlsin's morale with a mediocre Texas supermarket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to_the_United_States#Grocery_store_visit_in_Houston

I'm surprised we don't use helicopters or artillery. But I expect less insanity elsewhere.

1989 visit by Boris Yeltsin to the United States - Wikipedia

@mdhughes
> During the flight, Yeltsin was in a state of shock regarding the grocery store and remained speechless for a long time.
@mdhughes When I was first reading Hunter, I took up refering to vehicles by aquatic animal names. An 80,000 pound barracuda stuffed to the gills with cow's milk is, I think, the most useful way of describing reality. But people do not look at you the same after hearing it.