FUEL
Fuel shortages cause havoc in Cape
Posted Mon, 12 Dec 2005
Fuel will continue to be rationed at Cape Town airport for three or four days needed to build up reserves.
Speaking to SABC radio news, BP spokesperson Khader Jacobs said despite a delivery of 300 000 litres of fuel by 6pm on Sunday, it would take another three to four days for reserves to be fully topped up.
Flights were delayed on Saturday and Sunday when fuel was wrongly blended and had to be re-refined.
Fuel became available on the apron at 5.30pm on Sunday afternoon.
"The product became available half an hour ago," Jacobs said at
6pm. "Tanking has started."
But Jacobs called on airlines to keep their contingency plans in
place for another three or four days to allow the airport fuel farm
to build up a reserve.
Tanks ran dry on Saturday causing airlines and passengers major
inconvenience — Arts and Culture minister Pallo Jordan apparently
suffering a delay of six hours on a flight to Johannesburg.
Fuel had been
wrongly blended
The problem arose when fuel — sufficient for several days —
about to be shipped to the airport was found to have been wrongly
blended and could not be used until re-refined.
The Chevron refinery has been shipping 40 000 litres of fuel to
the airport every 20 minutes since Sunday morning to fill four
giant half-a-million litre tanks.
But once filled, each tank has to stand two hours for the fuel
to settle and before anything can be pumped into waiting aircraft.
The content of the tank has to pass stringent tests to ensure it
meets airline industry specifications.
For that reason all efforts were directed at filling one tank.
Jacobs said the tankers would run through Sunday night to fill the
others — and keep them filled.
He was concerned at the ability of Chevron to sustain its
production levels, noting it was putting out fuel equal to the
demand — hence his call for airlines to help conserve fuel in
the
Cape.
Colin McClelland, director of the SA Petroleum Industry
Association, added that Chevron seemed to be suffering teething
trouble in starting up. This after a maintenance and upgrade
programme related to the country's conversion to cleaner fuel in
January — a programme that cost the country's refineries R10-billion.
Chevron was to have resumed full production in mid November.
Nearly a month later, they were yet to get there.
"As a result fuel supplies (in Cape Town) became stressed,"
McClelland said.
Dave Scagell, area operations manager at Chevron Global Aviation
said they indeed held back supplies when it appeared not to be on
specification.
"I can assure you we won't ship if it (the fuel) is not on
spec," he said. "The product they have released is 100 percent on
spec," he said of the fuel supplies sent to the fuel farm on
Sunday.
"We are working round clock to sustain supply," he said in
response to concerns that they
would not be able to keep up
production.
SA Airways spokesperson Sarah Uys earlier in the afternoon said
the airline had obtained 320 000 litres of fuel, or about 80 metric
tons, and were rationing this at three metric tons per domestic flight.
Their Cape to London flight was being re-routed via Johannesburg
to pick up more fuel.
SA Airways general manager of flight operations Colin Jordaan
said the airline — and others — were caught unawares on Saturday.
As a result 139 passengers had to be accommodated at Cape hotels
overnight as there was no fuel to fly them from the city.
Jordaan said SAA had put "serious contingencies" in place and
were tanking down fuel on aircraft from Johannesburg to refuel
those stranded there.
Aircraft were also carrying extra fuel to fly back from Cape
Town without having to refuel there and the SAA flight to Frankfurt
had been routed through Johannesburg — to pick up fuel — before
flying
on.
Special dispensation had been obtained to land in Germany after
curfew.
"It's another difficult day," Jordaan said. "Yesterday we were
caught totally unawares. We usually have some warning."
Speaking to Sapa on Sunday evening, Jordaan said the London
flight would arrive at its destination an hour late as a result of
the conversion, but their other flights were largely on time and on
schedule.
Jordaan said SAA would be flying down its own fuel until Tuesday
when he hoped supply would be back to normal.
Nationwide Airlines marketing manager Paul Newman also expressed
outrage over the situation.
"It is an absolute joke," he said, saying it was a second time
flight operations had been disrupted — this week by a lack of
fuel, late last month by a lack of runway.
Newman said Nationwide and other airlines were diverting flights
to Kimberley, Bloemfontein and George to refuel before flying to
the Cape.
"You can imagine the
extra costs involved," Newman said, adding
that those airports were now also running low on fuel because of
the unexpected demand.
The fuel industry members held a crisis meeting on Saturday
afternoon to address jet fuel and petrol shortages.
On Saturday McClelland said problems with the availability of
petrol and diesel were also being experienced throughout the
country.
"We will make sure that national road service stations will have
petrol over the festive season so that people going on holiday
won't get stuck.
"However, motorists in Cape Town and Johannesburg may find that
there may be no petrol at some filling stations. People should not
drive their cars until the tank is empty. If you are passing a
filling station that has petrol, stop and fill up," he warned.
"It may also take a few weeks before every service station has
petrol. We can't say at this stage if there will be further
problems."
He added that fuel would be imported
from overseas wherever
necessary. From January there will no longer be lead in petrol and
a significant reduction of the level of sulphur in diesel.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance said the South African public
are not interested in excuses.
"You cannot fill your tanks with excuses. There has clearly been
a lack of planning which contributed to this chaos, and the
Democratic Alliance believes someone should stand up and take the
blame," energy spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said.
"Fuel shortages, whether it is at filling stations or at
airports, create the sort of ripple effects that our economy and
our tourism industry can hardly afford. Someone messed up and they
need to own up, before this happens again. They make SA sound like
a banana republic," Schmidt added.
Sapa
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