On 18 March 2026, Brent crude settled at $107.38 a barrel. Europe’s natural gas benchmark jumped 6% in a single trading day. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, schoolchildren stayed home, not because of a storm or a public holiday in the conventional sense, but because their government ran the numbers on its fuel reserves and did not like what it found.
Sri Lanka declared every Wednesday a public holiday, shifting to a four-day work week for all public institutions in a bid to slash fuel consumption as global energy flows buckle under the weight of a conflict none of its citizens started. Officials estimate the country has roughly six weeks of fuel reserves left. It is a stark, human-scale illustration of what happens downstream when the world’s energy architecture is simultaneously attacked at its most vulnerable points.
And this week, those points multiplied.
The attack on South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas reserve, shared between Iran and Qatar, marked the first time Israeli forces targeted Iranian natural gas production infrastructure since the conflict began on 28 February. Iran retaliated swiftly, firing ballistic missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, home to the largest LNG export facility in the world causing what QatarEnergy described as "extensive damage." Saudi Arabia’s SAMREF refinery, the UAE’s Al Hosn gasfield, and the Mesaieed petrochemical complex were all placed on Iran’s target list. The Gulf’s entire energy export architecture, the infrastructure the world spent decades building, is now an active theatre of war.
Trump distanced the United States from the South Pars strike, stating America "knew nothing about this particular attack," and warned Israel there would be "no more attacks", while simultaneously threatening to "massively blow up the entirety of South Pars" if Iran continued targeting Qatar’s facilities. The contradiction tells its own story about where US-Israeli strategic coordination currently stands. Israel acted unilaterally. Washington found out with everyone else. The relationship that shaped the region’s security architecture for decades is showing visible fractures.
For energy markets, the operational implications are severe and compounding. The Strait of Hormuz, already effectively closed to commercial shipping, handles roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil. The attacks on South Pars put added pressure on supply at the production level, creating what analysts are calling a double whammy: oil and gas that cannot be produced and oil and gas that cannot be moved. Qatar, the world’s second-largest LNG supplier, now has damaged infrastructure at Ras Laffan at the precise moment European buyers are desperately seeking non-Russian gas alternatives. The timing is structurally catastrophic.
Back in South Africa, the picture is more nuanced and more instructive than the headlines suggest. South Africa currently relies on just two operational crude oil refineries, NATREF and Astron Energy, alongside the Sasol Secunda coal-to-liquids plant, leaving the country exposed to imported crude price spikes and supply disruptions. Nearly 40% of the country’s fuel is coal-derived through Sasol, about 10% from NATREF, and a significant and growing share comes in as already-processed petrol from overseas refineries, primarily in India and the UAE. The irony is sharp: South Africa is importing refined product from a country, the UAE, whose own energy infrastructure might now be on Iran’s retaliation list.
This raises a question worth taking seriously, should South Africa be rebuilding domestic refining capacity, and is there a case for expanding coal-to-liquids production?
On the first question, the answer is increasingly yes. South Africa’s Secunda plant is the world’s only commercial coal-based synthetic fuels manufacturing facility, with a total production capacity of 160,000 barrels per day. As long as Secunda remains in operation, South Africa will not be wholly dependent on imports, but the rest of the refining base has been quietly hollowed out. The Sapref refinery, once the country’s largest, remains idle following flooding damage in 2022. Engen changed ownership. The country is drifting toward import dependence at exactly the moment global supply chains are demonstrating how dangerous that dependence is.
Expanding CTL capacity is not a simple proposition. Secunda is already the world’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gas at 56.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, and any expansion would run directly into South Africa’s Just Transition commitments and its bilateral energy agreements with the EU and US. The political and environmental cost of scaling up coal liquefaction is real. But the energy security cost of not having done so is becoming equally visible.
Sasol was formed in 1950 specifically to make oil from coal for a country with no large crude oil reserves. It ran at a loss for decades, sustained by the state, until the 1970s oil crisis drove prices high enough to make it viable. The parallel to the current moment is uncomfortable but accurate. The technology exists. The coal reserves exist. South Africa also has a crude oil storage capacity of 55 million barrels at Saldanha Bay, a strategic buffer that most African nations cannot claim. The infrastructure foundation for greater energy autonomy is present. What is missing is the political decision to treat energy security as a long-term industrial policy priority rather than a crisis management item.
What does this mean for the region? A South Africa that produces more of its own liquid fuel domestically, that rebuilds its refining base, and that develops its proposed LNG terminal at Richards Bay would be a qualitatively different energy actor in Southern Africa. It would be a potential supplier of refined products, of bunkering fuel for Cape route shipping, of LNG to landlocked SADC neighbours, rather than simply a price-taker in a market it does not control.
The current crisis will eventually pass. Prices will correct. The Strait may reopen. Qatar will rebuild. But the structural lesson, that energy security cannot be outsourced to the stability of foreign choke points and foreign refiners, is one South Africa has been slow to learn and slower to act on.
Sri Lanka is staying home on Wednesdays because it didn’t build the buffers when it had the chance. South Africa still has that chance. The question is whether it takes it.
*Chloe Maluleke
Associate at BRICS+ Consulting Group
Russia & Middle East Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
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