By Nneka Nwogwugwu
South Africa has now become the target for Bitumen suppliers from across the world to export bitumen into South Africa, a traditional net surplus market that is rapidly moving towards a net deficit position with lengthy refinery shutdowns and impending closures.
The current peak southern hemisphere road paving and bitumen-consuming season has generated widening interest from suppliers as far afield as Europe, west Africa, the Mideast Gulf and Asia-Pacific.
A number of bulk bitumen cargoes have already been shipped into South Africa over the past few months, mainly into Cape Town where Astron Energy’s 110,000 b/d refinery has been shut since a fire in July 2020. Astron said in February that the plant will remain shut until sometime in 2022.
The first South African import cargo in the recent spate of inflows was loaded in Colombia, on board Puma Energy’s 14,911 dwt Palanca Cadiz bitumen tanker, arriving in Cape Town in May before delivering remaining volumes into the firm’s Calabar terminal in Nigeria. That was followed in September by a cargo discharge into Cape Town on board the 15,000 dwt Puma tanker The Prospector that discharged around 5,000t into Cape Town before part-cargo deliveries into Angola, Nigeria and Benin.
French firm Rubis, which has extensive bitumen shipping and terminal operations centred on west Africa, made a two-port discharge in September into Cape Town and Durban, on board its 9,776 dwt Viveka, with the product lifted from the firm’s large-scale bitumen terminal hub at Lome, Togo. That was followed with a second attempted delivery into Cape Town from Lome last month, although no significant discharge was made because of a specification issue.
The firm has already installed around 4,000t of bitumen storage capacity in the Cape Town area to help meet local demand, with the product held in heated bitutainers. Several market participants said Rubis was recently awarded a tender to rent 4,000t of bitumen tank storage space in Cape Town for a 12-month period from February 2022.
Another international trading firm also entered the tender process, underlining the widening interest in exports to South Africa, while a 5,000t bitumen cargo is expected to be shipped by a separate firm from Asia-Pacific to Reunion and Mauritius in January, markets traditionally supplied with South African bitumen, mainly in bitutainers. A part of that cargo shipment could also go to South Africa.
The South African market has also received interest from Mideast Gulf exporters, with an offer last week of drummed bitumen from the region indicated at 10,350/t rand ($655/t) CFR Cape Town, although no deal was concluded. Domestic South African bulk truck prices are currently assessed by Argus at R9,300-9,700/t ex-works. Mideast Gulf suppliers were also alerted in recent weeks to potential bulk cargo requirements into South Africa, but again no deals with South African importers resulted.
