Refinery will be pointless

Good luck to Mestosync Energy, which wants to build a mega oil refinery producing 400,000 barrels a day near Port Elizabeth. It will be, by far, the largest refinery in SA. But by the time it is built there are not likely to be many customers.

Volkswagen, for example, has announced that by 2030 it will only build electric cars. The UK announced that by 2032 it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. Every major motor manufacturer in the world is going electric.

Electric cars are expensive but that is changing quickly as the Tesla Model 3, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are demonstrating. Once the cars are made in volume they will be cheaper than the present generation because they will have so few moving parts. They will not require oil changes, and maintenance costs will be a fraction of what we pay today.

So why build a mega refinery and probably a 1,000km pipeline to get the product to the main market in Gauteng when petrol and diesel vehicles are going to disappear like typewriters?

Mestosync will probably discover this when it asks for its first bank loan.

One wonders about the reasoning processes and research, but that seems to be an SA problem. Many grand projects come to naught.

The good news is that the electrification of the transport industry may just produce enough new business to save Eskom.

Janine Myburgh

President, Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry