PetroSA in court over air deal

11 July 2010 - 02:47 By Prega Govender
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PetroSA, the state-owned energy company, is being taken to court after replacing a private aviation company's charter service with the South African Air Force.

PetroSA terminated its dealings with Indwe Aviation last Wednesday and the next day co-opted the air force to transport workers from George airport to its offshore installations, including a platform that supplies gas to a refinery in Mossel Bay and the Orca floating crude oil production platform.

Martin Steynberg, chief operating officer of Indwe Aviation, brought an urgent application in the Cape Town High Court to compel PetroSA to retain his company.

"I am advised that it is unlawful for the SAAF to conduct what amounts to commercial air transport operations," Steynberg said in court papers.

He asked that PetroSA let his company continue with the air service until the two parties reach a new deal.

Steynberg's company leased two Sikorsky helicopters for R1.4-million a month for the PetroSA contract. The helicopters each carry 19 passengers and are capable of landing at sea.

Steynberg said his company, which had provided the service to PetroSA for two years, had been negotiating a new contract for more than a year.

He said he was informed in May that PetroSA's board, under the chairmanship of Popo Molefe, had passed a resolution to extend the contract for a year, but that PetroSA officials then told him otherwise last Wednesday.

Steynberg suspects that board politics at PetroSA played a "decisive role" in his company not getting a new contract.

According to Steynberg, Molefe had expressed "unhappiness" with Indwe Aviation's BEE partner, one of whose directors and shareholders is Bulelani Ngcuka, the former national director of public prosecutions.

"I was advised that the South African Air Force would be rendering the service from July 1. This decision was allegedly motivated by a threat to national security in the form of 'pirates along the east coast of Africa'," Steynberg said.

"The respondent's [PetroSA] invoking of an alleged national security threat as the justification for seeking the SAAF's assistance is belied by an internal memorandum to PetroSA staff that a further contract extension had not been granted 'because of failed, protracted negotiations'."

The SAAF, said the memo, offered "a professional and cost-effective alternative service that should add value to PetroSA's operations".

PetroSA spokesman Thabo Mabaso said the company could not comment as the matter was sub judice.

Siphiwe Dlamini, the head of communications for the SA National Defence Force, confirmed that the air force was "assisting" PetroSA.

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