EDITORIAL: No need to worry about fuel supply but ...
Outage at Natref means that SA has no functioning refineries at present and has to rely on imports for about 80% of its total fuel requirements
It should cause hardly a ripple when SA’s fourth-largest oil refinery is forced to declare force majeure, warning it may not be able to meet all its obligations to deliver petrol, diesel and jet fuel to its clients because of a temporary shortage of crude oil feedstock. But when the fourth-largest refinery is also the only functioning refinery it’s hardly surprising that an outage causes anxiety.
And when that dearth of local refining capacity is primarily the result of a long period of policy paralysis rather than any clear decision-making on the part of the government, it makes for more anxious times still — especially in a world in which global supply chains for fuel and feedstocks have turned out to be far more fragile than expected...
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