/ 6 February 2008

Cape Town refinery to resume production on Thursday

The Chevron Refinery in Cape Town is set to resume production of liquid petroleum gas, bunker gas oil (ship’s fuel) and jet fuel from Thursday evening.

”These products will again be available for sale by the end of the week,” the refinery said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon.

It had begun the process of starting up its production units following an unplanned shutdown caused by last Friday’s power cut in the city.

The production and supply of diesel and petrol was unaffected.

”Chevron currently has sufficient stocks of petrol and diesel, and expects to resume production of liquefied petroleum gas and bunker gas oil from tomorrow [Thursday] evening.

”Jet fuel production will also resume late tomorrow and, with contingency plans already in place to source additional product from other suppliers, Chevron expects jet stocks to normalise soon.”

Chevron said it did not expect further concerns regarding the supply of fuel once all key refinery production units were fully back online on Friday.

”The refinery also starts planned maintenance on some of its production units from the end of this week until the first week of March.

”This planned work will not affect fuel supply as contingency plans are already in place to ensure fuel is available during the maintenance period,” it said. — Sapa