Obituary: John Fair

Former chief of BP. Died aged 82

John Fair was the first New Zealander appointed managing-director of BP (NZ) Ltd.

Born in Westport in 1919 and educated in Wellington, he joined BP in 1947 and was named chief of the firm here in 1970, serving in the post until his retirement in 1978.

Mr Fair was sent to London to learn the oil business after he was first hired, and when he returned to Wellington began a rapid rise through the company while studying accountancy at Victoria University College.

He was instrumental in guiding BP (NZ) through the intense oil hunt in Taranaki, and his company was a member of consortium that discovered the Maui and Kapuni gasfields, critical to New Zealand's rapidly expanding need for energy.

Mr Fair was chairman of the company that built and ran the Whangarei refinery, which reduced New Zealand's need to import only refined oil products.

He learned to fly before the Second World War and when war broke out thought he would be a shoo-in for flying duties but missed out because he suffered from asthma. Instead, he was appointed commanding officer of the Air Force administration school, ending the war as a squadron leader.

That wartime job gave him a good grounding as an organiser, a skill he put to good use in BP.

In the years when inflation threatened to tip the balance of prosperity, Mr Fair was not always popular with the nation's rulers.

When the Government demanded that business should take a lead by reducing expenditure, Mr Fair would have none of it.

He argued that the Government was the instrument of economic policy and orchestrator of its effects, the implication being that the Government needed to put its own house in order to counter inflation.

Mr Fair was a member of the Pacific Basin Economic Council from 1971, chairedof its New Zealand committee from 1979-81, its deputy international president in 1984-85 and an international counsellor in 1986. He was made a member of Japan's Order Of The Rising Sun in 1987 for services to New Zealand-Japan relations.

When he left BP in 1978, Mr Fair remained within a select group of professional board members. He was on dozens of them, including the board of Independent Newspapers.

Mr Fair, whose wife died in 1987, is survived by a daughter and two sons.

- NZPA