{"id":138029,"date":"2016-09-26T09:18:33","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T07:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=138029"},"modified":"2016-09-26T09:18:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T07:18:33","slug":"secret-sa-oil-sale-a-bigger-rip-off-than-previously-thought-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/138029\/secret-sa-oil-sale-a-bigger-rip-off-than-previously-thought-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret SA oil sale a bigger rip off than previously thought: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ‘secret’ sale of 10 million barrels of South African reserve oil brought in only R3.9 billion – an amount significantly lower than the R5 billion ‘rip off’ previously reported<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is according to the auditor general<\/a><\/strong>, who in his latest 2015\/16 report on the Strategic Fuel Fund confirmed that the sale took place illegally.<\/p>\n

In late May, it was revealed that the Department of Energy sold off R5 billion worth of South African oil reserves, without getting permission from Treasury.<\/p>\n

Minister of Energy, Tina\u00a0Joemat-Pettersson and Central Energy Fund (CEF) Chief Executive, Sibusiso Gumede moved ahead with the sale without submitting information to Treasury, which is a contravention of the\u00a0Public Finance Management Act (PMFA).<\/p>\n

The minister and the CEF maintained that the move to sell the oil was part of a “rotation of stock”, which does not need permission from the finance minister to execute – however, Toemat-Pettersson has since conceded that there were errors and that an investigation is underway.<\/p>\n

Despite the illegality of the sale, a major point of contention was that the stocks were sold at a ‘discount’ – the stock was sold at\u00a0$28 a barrel when the price of oil rebounded to\u00a0$49 a barrel soon after.<\/p>\n

According to the Auditor General, however, South Africa was ripped off even more, as the sale only totalled R3.9 billion – a whole R1.1 billion less than what the department reported earlier in May.<\/p>\n

The move exposed the SFF to a potential R2.5 billion shortfall, should it be pushed to buy new oil to make up for the hole in the reserves, the AG said.<\/p>\n

More on government<\/h3>\n

Government \u2018secretly\u2019 sold off R5 billion worth of SA oil reserves \u2013 and got ripped off<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

How much it\u2019s costing taxpayers to suspend 300 government employees<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

These government departments are the worst at paying for services<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ‘secret’ sale of 10 million barrels of South African reserve oil brought in only R3.9 billion – an amount significantly lower than the R5 billion ‘rip off’ previously reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":74874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-138029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138033,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138029\/revisions\/138033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}