South Africa's second-largest oil refinery, the Engen Refinery, in KwaZulu-Natal, will undergo a planned maintenance outage from September 2.
The outage forms part of the refinery’s ongoing maintenance programme, with 21 days set aside for reformer regeneration activities and 63 days for maintenance of the plant’s alkylation unit.
“The planned outage will primarily focus on essential plant maintenance and inspection activities in the alkylation unit, as well as reformer catalyst regeneration activities,” says Engen Refinery GM Sykry Hassim.
Hassim says the outage will not affect Engen's ability to meet the needs of motorists.
“As always, Engen’s valued customers remain our first priority and they are assured that contingency plans are in place to ensure uninterrupted availability of Engen quality fuels and other primary refined petroleum products.”
Additional resource requirements over the outage period will result in the creation of about 1 500 temporary positions for both skilled and unskilled workers, many of whom have been sourced from the local South Durban community.
Engen is a distributor and marketer of fuels, lubricants and oil-based products. The Engen Refinery produces about 17% of South Africa’s fuel.