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Fuel sector 'must be nationalised'

Cape Town - In parliament on Tuesday, wide-ranging criticism of the apparently sluggish progress with black empowerment in the fuel industry went so far as to lead to calls for nationalisation of the strategic industry.

Tseliso Maqubela, deputy director-general for hydrocarbons and energy planning, said that some form of state intervention could help advance transformation in the industry.

The department is currently reviewing the fuel industry’s empowerment charter which was set up in 2000.

The department’s chief director for petroleum control, Zingisa Mavuso, said in a presentation to a joint sitting of the portfolio committee on energy and the National Council of Provinces' select committee on economic development that only 37% of filling stations belonged to black South Africans, and these filling stations were often in areas where they were only just surviving.
 
He considered that a filling station needed to sell at least 300 000 litres of fuel a month to make a profit.

There are only 30 black controlled wholesalers with licences to import fuel, but no more than 11 have so far done so – and only rarely. The volume of fuel that empowered dealers import comprises 0.5% of the total imported volume.

Mavuso reckoned the charter and the Petroleum Products Act needed to be changed to give black dealers greater access to the fuel infrastructure.

He asked whether government institutions like Eskom, which buy large quantities of fuel, in any way considered black ownership in their procurement policy, and whether a certain percentage of the capacity of the new fuel pipeline from Durban to Gauteng could be allocated to black dealers.

Bonang Mohale, acting chairperson and chief executive of Shell South Africa, acknowledged on behalf of the South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) that no South African woman currently headed any of the seven big fuel companies – although most current heads were at least black men.

Elizabeth Thabethe, chairperson of the portfolio committee on energy, was unimpressed with the lack of progress in transformation, and insisted that Sapia make a more detailed presentation in a month’s time.

SG Radebe (ANC) suggested that the fuel industry might be nationalised.

 - Sake24

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