Refinery

NATREF refinery — crude-distillation-unit fire

4 January 2025

Sasolburg, Free State, South Africa

What happened

A fire at the NATREF refinery's crude distillation unit damaged nearby piping, instrumentation and electrical cabling. No personnel were injured, but Sasol later reported that the entire refinery was non-operational for two months. The outage threatened jet-fuel supply to O.R. Tambo International Airport, prompting government and industry to secure about 121.1 million liters from alternative sources until production resumed.

Evidence
Documented
Confidence
High
Infrastructure
Refinery
Latitude
-26.8400°
Longitude
27.8300°

Attribution

Responsibility has not been established in the cited reporting.

Sources

  1. Sasol 2025 Form 20-F — NATREF crude-distillation-unit fireSasol; South African Department of Transport · Incident reporting