"We are now able to concurrently run the Durban to Johannesburg pipeline and the NMPP with petroleum products that will see some three million litres per hour... flowing between Durban and Johannesburg every week," Transnet group CEO Brian Molefe told reporters yesterday.

He then turned a valve linked to the NMPP to show it was carrying fuel.

The diesel took a week to travel 555 km, from the Durban port to the Jameson Park inland terminal in Heidelberg, at a speed of six to seven kilometres an hour.

The pipeline, which has a diameter of 60 cm, passed through three pump stations – all now completed – and over the Drakensberg escarpment.

The pump stations were built at Kwamakutha, Pietermaritzburg and Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal. A network of 40 cm pipelines linking to the bigger pipeline had also been completed, Molefe said.

The entire R23.4 billion NMPP would be finished when the terminal at Jameson Park, and another at Island View in the port of Durban, were completed within the next 18 months.

Until then the NMPP would be able to operate at only 50% of its total capacity.

Once complete, the pipeline would be able to transport 95 and 93 unleaded petrol, 500 and 50ppm diesel and jet fuel on behalf of its customers, South African oil companies.

Molefe said the NMPP would fulfil two of Transnet's commitments: to ensure inland market demand was met and to reduce the number of tankers on the roads, reducing traffic congestion.

It would also ensure a sufficient supply of fuel to inland areas, particularly the economic hub of Gauteng.

"Over a billion rand a day [is lost] to the economy if we're without fuel," said Moira Moses, group executive of Transnet Capital Projects.

The new pipeline would take over from the Durban-Johannesburg pipeline – in operation since 1965 – which was working at maximum capacity but unable to meet demand, and nearing the end of its lifespan.

The NMPP was expected to last more than 50 years.

During construction, the NMPP was safely laid across 50 rivers, and met environmental requirements in some 100km of wetlands.

"We even dammed the Vaal River to build," said Neville Eve, general manager of the pipeline project.

Once the NMPP was in full use, it could lead to a 60% drop in the number of fuel tankers on South African roads, Transnet said.

The NMPP was built in response to the Moerane commission report on fuel shortages in 2005.

The report found additional pipeline capacity was "urgently required to supply the inland markets" and recommended that Petronet (now Transnet Pipelines) develop a new pipeline from Durban to Gauteng.

The department of minerals and energy in 2007 – in its strategic document 'The Energy Security Master Plan: Liquid Fuels' – said its single most important recommendation on infrastructure investment in the South African liquid fuels sector in the next five years was the approval of an appropriately sized, properly integrated pipeline.