Industry News

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30
May

More pain ahead for embattled consumers as fuel prices climb

The pressure on SA’s embattled consumers continues, with a massive fuel-price increase expected to be announced on Friday due to a surge in the price of Brent crude oil and rand weakness. This will in all likelihood push the cost of unleaded petrol towards R16 a litre, but analysts say it is not all doom and gloom. In the long term, oil prices should ease from recent multiyear highs as…

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29
May

Africa’s hidden oil hub near Cape Town booms after making millions for traders

For oil traders, there’s no place quite like Saldanha Bay. When prices slumped in 2014, trading houses generated outsize profits by storing millions of barrels of crude in the deep-water harbour north of Cape Town. Now storage facilities at the port - where South Africa built vast concrete bunkers in the 1970s that helped insulate the apartheid regime from United Nations oil sanctions - are expanding. Saldanha could have turned…

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28
May

Racial exclusion from Sasol share plan means strike is possible

Government mediators ruled that workers at Sasol [JSE:SOL] are allowed to strike over the exclusion of white staff from an employee-shareholding plan. Solidarity, a labour union that represents skilled, mainly white workers, registered a dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, or CCMA, after Sasol introduced benefits that it said would exclude workers based on race. South African businesses have implemented plans since democratic elections in 1994 that…

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23
May

BP’s CEO talks of future expansion in uncertain times

London — After the near collapse of his company following the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster and a three-year slump in oil prices, BP CEO Bob Dudley is hardly relaxed. "It doesn’t feel like we are in a serene time for any energy company," Dudley tells Reuters in an interview. BP is stronger today than at any other time since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig accident. With oil prices at…

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23
May

Glencore looks set to beat Sinopec to buy Chevron’s SA assets in $1bn deal

Glencore is close to a $1bn deal to buy Chevron’s assets in SA and Botswana, potentially scuppering an earlier agreement with China’s Sinopec, according to three people familiar with the matter. Glencore would complete the deal within the next six weeks, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. The assets include a 100,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Cape Town and more than…

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23
May

Price of fuel, alcoholic beverages drives spike in inflation

South Africa's consumer inflation came out at 4.5% for April, up from 3.8% in March. The big culprits behind the rise in inflation were the increases in fuel prices and alcoholic beverages, TreasuryONE said in a snapnote. The rand came under pressure on Wednesday as Turkey placed emerging market currencies in focus, with the local unit testing R12.69 to the US dollar earlier - currently back at R12.64, according to…

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21
May

Total will not risk investing in Iran due to US sanctions, unless it gets a waiver

Paris — Total has said it will not risk investing in Iran following the return of US sanctions, unless it can secure a waiver. Continuing to do business in Iran would be too great a risk as the company has large operations in the US and depends on the country’s banks for financing its operations, Total said in a statement on Wednesday. So the French energy giant won’t commit any…

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21
May

Jeff Radebe details new measures to fuel SA

The government will soon be consulting major roleplayers in the petroleum sector on the construction of a new refinery in SA, Energy Minister Jeff Radebe said on Wednesday. He said a detailed plan should be finalised by the end of November. A regulatory framework to provide policy certainty to the industry would be completed by the end of 2018. Construction of a new refinery will require significant investment and a…

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10
May

Trump sanctions on Iran will hurt SA in fuel price – DoE

Johannesburg – The direct impact of the US sanctions on Iran would be felt on fuel prices, although South Africa does not import oil from the Middle East state, the Department of Energy said on Thursday. South Africa imports almost a quarter of its fuel, and the country ceased to receive oil from Iran in 2012. “As far as the immediate impact of the US sanctions on Iran are concerned,…

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10
May

What Trump’s Iran call means for the petrol price and the rand

US president Donald Trump has pulled out of a deal with Iran and chosen to re-impose sanctions on the country – which spells bad news for the rand, the petrol price, and any businesses tied up in the Middle Eastern nation. On 8 May 2018 the US announced its decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement and to re-impose economic sanctions against Iran. Under the…

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