South Africa’s players in the manufacturing or sale of petroleum products have until September 17 — but effectively Friday September 15 — to lodge licence applications to the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs, the chief director of hydrocarbons Nhlanhla Gumede said on Wednesday.
He said just 2 600 of the 12 000 retail operators had applied for licences so far, noting that those who did not apply for a licence by then would thereafter be operating illegally in terms of the Petroleum Products Amendment
Act.
Gumede, who earlier addressed the National Assembly minerals and energy portfolio committee, said that anyone operating without a licence under the Act
would be guilty of an offence and would be liable on conviction to a fine of up to R1-million.
There are four licence types — site, retail, manufacturing and wholesale. He noted that none of the big seven players in manufacturing had applied yet for a licence but the department had been assured that licence applications would be lodged.
Among the obligations under the licence are certain environmental conditions — such as the thickness of the fuel tanks at a site — and empowerment conditions in terms of the industry charter.
He said the legislation also limited the practice of wholesalers in the industry selling its product at the wholesale price to a big company — such as Telkom or Transnet for example — but allowing the sale of that product to those customers at its retail outlets. The legislation was trying to deal with what he described as this “cross-subsidisation issue” — where the other users paid the retail price and covered the cost of the retail outlets. – I-Net Bridge