Apartheid oil stash remains untouched as retrieval project stalls
Three years after the contract was signed, the company that was to recover the crude from a mine in Mpumalanga has yet to implement the project
A South African company that borrowed $15.4m worth of oil sludge from the government to help fund the recovery of crude stored in a mine during apartheid has yet to implement the project more than three years after the contract was signed, according to a person familiar with the situation. The project emanated from a request for proposals issued in 2013 by the Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF) to recover and reprocess sludge, a lower-value product that accumulates when oil is stored. One of the respondents was Enviroshore Trade and Logistics, which said it believed there could be as many as 5-million barrels of crude in the Ogies coal mine in the eastern Mpumalanga province. It offered to retrieve it on condition it be loaned 300,000 barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic reserves. Under the agreement it would keep 70% of any fuel recovered. International sanctions hindered SA from buying oil during apartheid and the Strategic Fuel Fund was tasked with ensuring SA had sufficient fuel su...
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