The 400 000-bl/d project Mthombo crude oil refinery to be built at Coega, in the Eastern Cape, would be the ideal opportunity to train locals to provide services to the refinery in the long term, PetroSA CEO Sipho Mkhize said on Thursday.

He noted during a conference in Johannesburg that there were a lot of services that could be supplied to the refinery and that the project would, apart from all the other benefits it would bring to South Africa, encourage entrepreneurial development and alleviate poverty in one of the country’s poorest provinces.

Mkhize’s comments followed on the launch, on Wednesday, of the Business for Development Pathfinder initiative, which was spearheaded by the Southern Africa Trust and the SADC Employers Group (SEG) and which called on businesses in Southern Africa to create opportunities for poor communities so that they could lift themselves out of poverty.

The refinery would provide up to 30 000 temporary jobs during the construction period, 1 000 permanent jobs at the refinery and a further 15 000 jobs in associated industries.

Mkhize further highlighted that the clean fuel quality in South Africa was far behind many other developing countries, like China and India, as the country’s old refineries were not competitive compared with today’s technologies.

Existing refineries would require significant investment of up to R40-billion to upgrade to comply with future clean fuels specifications, he noted.

Project Mthombo would also allow the country to move away from the reliance on the Durban port, where the majority of fuels are shipped into, as well as ensure an expansion of the inland pipeline logistics, with a complementary pipeline to the inland leading to reduced logistics costs.

The refinery, which was expected to come on stream in 2015, would require 614 m3/h of water and 231 m3/h of treated effluent from municipalities, would also be able to provide its own power generation needs.

Mkhize noted that the refinery would produce about 5 600 t/d of petroleum coke, which would allow PetroSA to generate about 800 MW of electricity.

As the refinery would only require about 200 MW of power for its own needs, the remaining 600 MW could be sold to the national grid.