The City of Cape Town was hit with fuel shortages this past weekend as a result of an unplanned outage at the Astron Energy refinery in Milnerton, coupled with inclement weather that complicated the delivery of fuels to the city’s port.
Popular stations such as BP, Engen, and Shell situated in and around the Cape Town metro had limited supplies of Unleaded Petrol 95, forcing motorists to travel further afield to fill up their vehicles with this grade of fuel.
BP Southern Africa spokesperson, Hamlet Morule, told Cape Argus its service stations were among those impacted by the shortage.
“To mitigate the unforeseen challenge, BP SA diverted a Mogas import vessel which was destined for Durban to Cape Town, to ensure security of supply. Unfortunately, the vessel was also delayed by inclement weather conditions since 19 October,” said Morule.
Engen and Shell have also stated that they are aware of the supply shocks, ensuring the public that they have put contingency plans in place to ensure consistent delivery of petroleum products to the market.
Astron Energy spokesperson, Donna Fata, confirmed on Tuesday that the Milnerton refinery is fully operational after the unplanned outage and shipping fuels to affected clients once again.
Transnet oracle
The Cape Town fuel shortage comes mere days after state-owned rail and port authority Transnet issued a warning that the country may suffer from periodic fuel shortages over the coming years due to the deterioration in local refining capacity.
In a media presentation in early October, Transnet highlighted that the increasing dependence on imports leaves South Africa’s fuel pipeline system susceptible to interruptions that “may result in temporary fuel shortages.”
Some five years ago, the country was home to six refineries that churned out a combined 713,000 barrels of petroleum per day, and it thus had to rely on international suppliers to satisfy only 30% of its petrol, diesel, and jet fuel needs.
In the years since, several of these refineries shut down operations for various reasons, from flooding that would’ve been too expensive to repair to a shortage of feedstock.
As a result, South Africa today imports roughly 70% of its fuel requirements and produces under 370,000 barrels of petroleum per day, according to the Fuels Industry Association of South Africa.
Sapref Refinery in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal
Industry expert Rod Crompton, visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Business’ African Energy Leadership Centre, emphasised that government should fast-track private sector participation in its activities as well as incentivise electric-vehicle (EV) uptake if it hopes to avoid future fuel supply disruptions.
He noted that higher levels of private sector involvement could be a boon for improving efficiency at Transnet’s Durban port; and accelerated adoption of EVs, which can be facilitated by favourable policies, would reduce the demand for liquid fuels.
Government itself has also indicated that it will attempt to revive two of the country’s biggest fuel refineries in the coming years, comprising the Sapref and PetroSA facilities, with a combined output potential of 225,000 barrels per day.
Crompton warned, however, that the restoration of these refineries will not be without their challenges.
“There’s the old Sapref refinery that the government-owned Central Energy Fund bought for R1, but what they didn’t say is they also bought billions of rands of environmental liability,” he said.
“I believe the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy has been talking about revamping that refinery and revitalising it. Remember, it was flooded, and BP and Shell decided not to fix it after the floods, so [government] has to fix that and then get it working and then invest for the cleaner fuel specification, so most people in the industry are very sceptical that government would be able to do that. If you look at the way PetroSA has behaved, its corporate record is not too promising.”
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