South African jet fuel suppliers need to maintain higher stock levels in the event of production outages, such as the one at Sasol’s Natref refinery last week, which prompted airlines to make backup plans, Chief Executive Officer Simon Baloyi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Natref has taken measures, following issues on some units, that leave a \u201clow probability\u201d of potential jet-fuel shortages at Johannesburg\u2019s OR Tambo International Airport \u2014 the nation\u2019s busiest \u2014 but suppliers should be better prepared, he said in an interview Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Airlines last week made contingency arrangements and the Department of Energy convened an emergency meeting with the airport and the Fuels Industry Association of South Africa due to the refinery disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baloyi said that in light of current geopolitics \u2014 which have included oil shocks to both prices and physical supply because of the Iran war \u2014 he was surprised at the inadequate levels of jet fuel held by suppliers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t run with low inventory,\u201d he said. \u201cOperational plants are operational plants \u2014 they\u2019ll go up, they\u2019ll go down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Iran war has forced South Africa and other nations on the continent that are reliant on fuel imports to find new sources of supply. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s also highlighted the need for higher inventory levels to prevent future shortages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources proposed in July that 60 days of demand be covered by reserves, of which about two-thirds will be crude and the remainder oil products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Licensed wholesalers and importers would be required to keep 21 days of inventory under the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vitol Group\u2019s Vivo Energy is building fuel tanks at a former refinery site in the eastern port city of Durban, a R2.1 billion project that commenced before the start of the war. The 300,000 cubic metres of capacity is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sasol’s CEO said airlines should have higher jet fuel stocks to protect against potential production shortages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":873400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2095126605974614187","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2193796798107386","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1499,2240,26381],"class_list":["post-873405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-department-of-energy","tag-sasol","tag-simon-baloyi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873405","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873405"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873411,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873405\/revisions\/873411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}