No Coal, No Electric, No Refinery… No Jet Fuel

by BWK ~ February 6, 2008

No coal —-> No electric —-> No Refinery —-> No jet fuel.

This South African power mess is just rippling outward. South Africa has suspended power exports to neighboring countries. This has impacted industry all over the southern part of Africa. This lights are going out. Mines & mills are closing. Layoffs are happening. Food is spoiling.

When the power managers say that “We are only cutting power by 10%, to 90% of normal consumption,” that is disingenuous. There is some baseline level of power that just has to flow. Eg, in the mining biz, the deep mines require 50% of the power just for absolutely basic stuff… pumps and air supply. The “other” 50% of power is what moves the workers and the ore. So a nominal 10% cut is really at least 20% of the useful power, from the standpoint of digging rock. And that is just a linear approach of viewing things. The 10% cut can cause far more than a 20% decline in productivity.

Jeez, this is an African Long Emergency. Too bad that Africa has had such a short time in the electric age.

You heard it here first…

BWK

“The Airports Company of SA (Acsa) says it is monitoring supplies of aircraft fuel available in Cape Town after a power outage last week caused a local refinery’s aviation fuel plant to close down.

“As of today (Tuesday), we can confirm that we have seven days worth of aviation fuel supply in Cape Town, which means that normal flight operations will not be affected for the time being,” Cape Town airport manager George Uriesi said.

The fuel consortium that supplied the airport was currently discussing the situation, and had undertaken to advise Acsa by Thursday morning at the latest of “what steps they have taken to restore fuel supply”.

According to Business Report on Tuesday, the process of restarting the knocked-out refinery fuel plant takes seven days.”

Check out the rest here:
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=181&art_id=nw20080205135510289C286098