OPEC had New Zealand and most other countries by the economic throat from 1979 through the early 1980s. price hike of 14.5 percent on April Fool’s Day 1979 was no joke and another of 15 percent in June showed the oil producers’ cartel was deadly serious. Approaching the 1981 election, PM Robert Muldoon’s costly solution to the ‘second oil shock’ was ‘Think Big’ strategy including the conversion of natural gas, via methanol, to petrol. The bold aim was to make New Zealand 30 percent self-sufficient in petrol by 1987 and save $170 million in foreign exchange annually. In early April 2004 the scrapping of Project Aqua coupled with OPEC talk of oil output cuts, that would push crude oil prices skywards, mean the country’s energy future, and associated costs, are very much on the political agenda through to the 2005 election.
Peter Bromhead, Auckland Star, 27 May 1981
From the NZ Cartoon Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, P O Box 12349, Wellington, Tel/fax 04-474 3154
The national collection of cartoons and caricatures
