Foreign minister Winston Peters made the request during a meeting on Tuesday with US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Washington.

“We had a serious discussion about how they might help,” Peters told national broadcaster RNZ.

Wellington asked Washington to “get some ancillary tankers ready and get them to New Zealand to spread it around the Pacific as fast as we possibly can,” Peters said.

“Don’t leave it to when it happens, get ready just in case it’s going to happen. We had a very positive discussion on that basis.”

Pacific Island nations have been hard hit by the soaring price of oil due to the conflict in the Middle East.

Most Pacific nations rely on imported diesel fuel just to keep the lights on.

In Tonga, 80% of its energy generation comes from imported diesel fuel, and two-thirds of Samoa’s energy comes from imported diesel.

Samoan prime minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt said last month he had asked New Zealand to “cover us in case something happened” to its fuel supply.

Vanuatu and Kiribati rely on diesel for more than 85% of their energy.

Peters said his meeting with Rubio was a chance to make sure “the United States understands the cost to us, to the Pacific” of the war in the Middle East.

“Not just the New Zealand economy but to the Pacific economies that we have so much responsibility for,” Peters told RNZ.

“We left all that very clearly in their mind as concerns we had.”

According to a read-out from Peters’ office, he and Rubio also discussed bilateral relations and critical minerals, and Rubio was invited to attend the Pacific Islands Forum in New Zealand next year.

Speaking before the meeting, Rubio blamed Iran for striking commercial vessels in the vital Strait of Hormuz and said “the whole world’s been impacted.”