New Zealand farmers dump milk after gas pipeline leak

Oct 26, 2011, 6:19 GMT

Wellington - New Zealand farmers dumped thousands of litres of milk on their fields Wednesday, and factories, crematoriums and the country's biggest ice cream maker closed after the country's main natural gas pipeline was shut down because of a leak.

Officials said it could take two or three days or more to repair the underground pipeline, which was costing the economy millions of dollars.

The main pipeline distributing natural gas from the offshore Maui field off the west coast to thousands of commercial users on the North Island was shut Tuesday after a farmer reported the leak.

At least 5,000 businesses suffered the loss of their primary energy supply, including the Burger King chain, which closed 39 of its fast food outlets.

Every restaurant north of the lakeside town Taupo in the centre of the North Island was affected, and many switched to barbecues to keep customers fed.

The Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd, the world's biggest exporter of dairy products, closed 15 of its factories that rely on gas to process milk. It said about 30 million litres would be wasted every day the shutdown continued at a cost of 20 million New Zealand dollars daily (16 million US dollars).

Fonterra said 6,000 of its 10,500 suppliers were affected. It was not possible to stop milking cows twice a day, and without storage facilities, the milk would be sprayed on fields until processing could resume.

Factories in the country's biggest city, Auckland, shut down, and hospitals asked patients to supply their own nightwear and towels because of restricted laundry facilities.

Late Wednesday, a secondary pipeline supplying Auckland and the Waikato and Bay of Plenty provinces began pumping gas to some of Fonterra's factories. The company's head of trade and operations, Gary Romano, said it could take five to 16 hours to start processing milk again.

The company said it hoped to pick up about half the milk produced by cows in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty provinces that night.

Officials of the pipeline operator Vector Ltd said the leak was in steep and difficult terrain and it was not known how long it would take to repair.