2 years ago South Africa had 4 refineries supplying the fuel needs of the country. As of Friday there was not one refinery working as 3 have shut down indefinitely and the National refinery has no crude to process.
The South African economy has been shot to pieces with any hope of recovery being ruined by the constant power outages. Businesses are in survival mode and many after years of financial pressure are on the brink. This is not only the small businesses but many of the big boys are feeling the strain.
SASOL South Africa's Government controlled refinery is feeling the heat as they shut their refinery down due to "supply chain" issues. they blame the non arrival of crude imports for the National refinery closing it's doors. This has resulted in the non manufacture of Petroleum related products which will have a knock on effect once they are back up and running.
We as manufacturers have been struggling since last year to obtain raw materials and are sick and tired of hearing hat there are shortages. You order 20 tons and are only delivered 10 tons if you are lucky. This cuts down the manufacturing capabilities as orders cannot be processed reducing profits.
The problem is South Africa used to have multiple refineries dotted around the country. BP and Shell shut down their SAPREF refinery in February which was the biggest Crude refinery in South Africa. This refinery processed 180 000 barrels of crude per day and represented 35% of SA's requirements.
It is actually worse than that as two other refineries closed in 2020 due to explosions and have never reopened. One in Cape Town that processed 100K barrels per day and one in Durban 120K barrels per day have left it all at the feet of SASOL who is struggling. I didn't know this until I researched how bad things really were and hits home how bad things really are. This is not surprising there are serious shortages of by products and this is only going to get worse.
2 years ago SASOL had the cheek to raise import duties on our raw materials so we were stuck with buying local and now they cannot even supply. South Africa requires 25 billion of fuel per year to meet the demand and are already importing more than 50% of those numbers. These numbers should rise to 70 % or more just by the number of refineries they have active which is a shocking stat.
