Refinery Breakdown Cuts Jet Fuel Supply at Johannesburg Airport

Sasol confirmed on 26 August 2026 that an unplanned shutdown of a downstream unit at the Natref refinery in Sasolburg has cut the volume of fuel it can deliver to customers, including jet fuel buyers at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. The refiner said it will keep supplying those customers on a partial basis while it works to bring the affected unit back into service. Airlines using South Africa's busiest airport reacted by activating contingency arrangements rather than trimming schedules.

In its statement, Sasol Oil said the outage has affected its ability to meet full supply commitments on certain product grades, and that mitigation measures are being applied to limit the impact on customers. The company has not given a restart date for the unit and has not said whether jet fuel deliveries to other South African airports will be affected. Further updates will follow as the situation develops, according to the group.

FlySafair, which carries more than half of South Africa's domestic passengers, said it does not plan to cancel flights. Chief marketing officer Kirby Gordon said the airline has arranged to temporarily increase volumes from suppliers that still have fuel available, and is combining that with a moderate tankering adjustment. Tankering means loading extra fuel at an airport where supply is comfortable so that an aircraft needs less at its destination. The trade off is higher weight and slightly higher burn, which makes the practice useful for short periods rather than as a lasting fix.

According to FlySafair's understanding of events, the disruption followed planned maintenance at Natref that was then compounded by a technical problem. That sequence matters, because a maintenance driven drawdown of stock leaves less margin for error when a unit fails to come back on line as scheduled.

The Airlines Association of Southern Africa said the Department of Energy convened an emergency meeting with Airports Company South Africa and the Fuels Industry Association of Southern Africa on the afternoon of 26 August. As of 27 August no carrier has announced cancellations at OR Tambo, and it is still unclear whether ticket prices will move as a result of the tighter local supply.

Natref is the only inland crude oil refinery in South Africa. Commissioned in 1971 and located about 80 kilometres south of Johannesburg, it processes up to 108,500 barrels of crude a day and is owned by Sasol with 63.64 percent and the Prax Group with 36.36 percent. Its inland position makes it the natural supplier for Gauteng, the province that generates the largest share of national output, and for the fuel farm at OR Tambo. South Africa now runs only two crude refineries, Natref and Astron in Cape Town, so a single unit failure removes a meaningful slice of domestic production.

This is the second serious jet fuel scare tied to Natref in under two years. A fire on 4 January 2025 damaged infrastructure around the crude distillation unit and forced a full shutdown, leaving some aircraft unable to refuel at OR Tambo and pushing carriers to take on fuel in Windhoek and Durban instead. The Department of Transport and the fuels industry then secured 121.1 million litres of imported jet fuel, brought in through the Port of Durban from early February 2025, to cover demand until the refinery restarted at the end of that month. Stakeholders agreed at the time that a dedicated jet fuel reserve should be built as a buffer for exactly this kind of event.

Industry bodies have repeatedly flagged a regulatory constraint that makes these episodes harder to manage. Under the Customs and Excise Act of 1964, imported jet fuel cannot be delivered straight into an import terminal and must be routed through a licensed manufacturing warehouse or refinery. With only two refineries left in the country, that requirement narrows the options available whenever one of them is offline.

The Johannesburg squeeze arrives while neighbouring Namibia is dealing with a shortage of its own. A cargo imported by Vivo Energy Namibia, the Vitol unit that supplies the country, failed routine quality tests at Walvis Bay after being tainted by petrol loaded on the same vessel, and was quarantined before it reached the distribution network. Discover Airlines has been routing its Windhoek flights to Frankfurt and Munich through Luanda in Angola for a refuelling stop, and Lufthansa Cargo halted outbound freight from Windhoek. Replacement supplies are being arranged and the disruption was expected to run into the weekend.

Both incidents sit on top of a global jet fuel market that has been tight since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran at the end of February 2026. Disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz removed a large volume of kerosene from the market and pushed European jet fuel to about 187 dollars a barrel by 1 May, roughly double the level of a year earlier, based on figures from the International Air Transport Association. Prices have eased from the April peak but remain above historical averages, and carriers such as United Airlines have guided to billions of dollars in additional fuel costs for the full year.

For now the practical question is how quickly Natref restores the affected unit. If the outage lasts days, tankering and reallocated cargoes should hold the line at OR Tambo. If it stretches into weeks, South Africa is likely to repeat the 2025 playbook of emergency imports through Durban, with the added complication that replacement barrels are more expensive and harder to source than they were before the Middle East conflict. Airlines, freight forwarders and travellers routing through Johannesburg should watch for further updates from Sasol and Airports Company South Africa over the coming days.