A leap year technical glitch is being blamed for causing outages at fuel stations across the country.

Fuel provider Allied Petroleum and Gull say they are aware of nationwide technical issues affecting motorists across all fuel brands.

RNZ has spoken to one motorist who said he tried four petrol stations this morning and was told the outage was caused by leap day not being factored into the system.

Gull spokesperson Julien Leys confirmed it was a leap day issue with their technology provider.

"We understand that it is a software technical glitch to do with leap day."

Leys said the company was working very closely with payment software provider Invenco to try to resolve things as quickly as possible.

In a Facebook post, Gull said it understood the frustration its customers were feeling.

"We will have a discount day next week to make up for the inconvenience."

Main image (RNZ/Dan Cook)