Sasol, South Africa’s largest fuel producer, has declared force majeure on the supply of petroleum products.
Businesstech says that this is due to delays in deliveries of crude to the Natref refinery it owns with TotalEnergies SE. This leaves a fraction of the country’s fuel-production capacity still operational.
Natref, a 108 000-barrel-a-day plant, was forced to shut after late oil shipments. ‘Sasol Oil will not be in a position to fully meet its commitments on the supply of all petroleum products from July 2022,’ the company said.
The shutdown means that the whole of South Africa’s oil-refinery fleet is out of action, with a string of other facilities having suspended production over the past two years.
Consequently, the country’s monthly petroleum product imports are set to triple by 2023 from pre-pandemic levels, according to a May report by energy consultant Citac.
Only Sasol’s synthetic fuel operations, using coal to manufacture petrol, remain fully operational.
A fire at the Engen oil refinery and an explosion at Glencore Plc’s Cape Town refinery have rapidly curbed capacity.
Sapref, the country’s biggest plant, owned by Shell Plc and BP Plc, stopped operations ahead of a sale and was subsequently damaged by floods. State-owned PetroSA’s gas-to-liquids plant, another synthetic operation, has run out of feedstock.
A clean-fuels policy that’s set to take effect next year means that refineries unable to meet the new standards are likely to have to shut permanently.
The outage at Natref is temporary. Crude oil shipments are expected to start arriving shortly, so Natref is expected to ramp up to maximum production by the end of July, Sasol said.
The Cape Town refinery is also expected to restart in the second half of 2022.
[Image: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/refinery-refining-pipes-valves-2059775/]