South Africa is experiencing a shortage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) due to unplanned shutdowns within the local oil refinery industry, the South African Petroleum Industry Association (SAPIA) confirmed on Thursday.
SAPIA, the industry body which represents the oil refinery sector, said a number of refineries were currently on planned maintenance shutdowns, and others were on an unplanned shutdowns due to technical difficulties.
As Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) was a by-product of the oil refining process, this meant South Africa was experiencing an acute shortage.
SAPIA further confirmed it anticipates that the affected refineries would be coming online and that should improve the situation. However, SAPIA could not give any timelines as to when full production from refineries would normalise.
“We have always worked closely with our LPG suppliers but no one could have foreseen the extent of the unplanned shutdowns experienced by South Africa's petroleum industry,” said LPG distributor Afrox.
Afrox was committed to doing all it reasonably could to cope with the shortage but demand was outstripping the company's limited ability to import stocks of LPG, which faced the triple constraints of the high cost-to-consumer, the dynamics of importing by sea and lack of inland storage facilities.
“The LPG situation in South Africa is having a serious effect on the hospitality, manufacturing and automotive sectors of the local economy. In some parts of the country we have totally run out of product with little prospect of recovering the situation in the immediate term but Afrox continues to engage with all parties in an effort to find solutions for our customers.”
The company said that even importing product had its difficulties, namely the costs involved, uncertain scheduling as it was imported by sea and inland facilities in which to store imported product once landed were limited.
“These issues make LPG imports a last measure instead of a first response.” - I-Net Bridge