21 February 2008
State oil and gas company PetroSA has announced plans to upgrade and expand its facilities around South Africa, both to improve the country’s fuel supply chain and to secure strategic fuel reserves.
The company, which operates the world’s largest gas-to-liquid refinery at Mossel Bay in the Western Cape, recently announced that studies had shown that its planned crude oil refinery at the Coega industrial development zone would be able to produce 250 000 barrels of fuel a day, up from an earlier estimate of 200 000 barrels a day..
The Coega Development Corporation announced last week that PetroSA had been granted preferred investor status for the land earmarked for the refinery.
In addition to the planned refinery at Coega, construction of new facilities and upgrades “will be urgently undertaken at key national locations, including Cape Town, Durban, Gauteng and Saldanha,” PetroSA midstream and new ventures vice-president Joern Falbe said in a statement on Monday.
These will include upgrades to PetroSA’s bulk oil storage and import capacity in Cape Town, to its storage facilities in Saldhana Bay, and to the storage capacity of the feedstock tanks that supply its gas-to-liquids refinery in Mossel Bay. In addition, the company will establish a new strategic fuel storage facility in Durban.
Also at Coega, PetroSA wants to develop a fuels industry terminal for imports into the Eastern Cape, as well as build new storage facilities.
“The successful implementation of these strategic initiatives will go a long way towards mitigating possible future product shortages and reduce South Africa’s dependence on imports,” said PetroSA CEO Sipho Mkhize.
Source: BuaNews
