Vitol drops plan to buy Gupta stake in S. African coal port

GENEVA: Vitol Group, the world’s largest independent oil trader, walked away from a deal to buy a stake in the Richards Bay Coal Terminal from a company controlled by South Africa’s Gupta family.

“The consortium comprising Vitol and Burgh Group Holdings will not be proceeding with the acquisition,” the commodities-trading house said in a statement.

The proposed deal, first reported by Bloomberg News in September 2016, would have seen Vitol and South Africa’s Burgh Group acquire Optimum Coal Terminal Pty Ltd from the Gupta’s Tegeta Exploration and Resources Ltd.

It would have given the investors a 7.61% stake in Richards Bay and rights to ship about eight million tonnes of the fuel annually from South Africa, a key supplier to Asia.

The Guptas are friends with South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma. In December 2015 the family, along with Zuma’s son, Duduzane, bought Optimum through Tegeta for 2.15 billion rand (US$163mil) from miner and trading house Glencore Plc.

The purchase would have given Vitol, which handles more than seven million barrels of oil a day and more than 30 million tonnes of coal annually, access to a key export facility in one of the largest coal-producing countries.

Vitol has trading and marketing operations in South Africa and its VTTI unit is building a fuel-storage facility in Cape Town. In 2012, it formed a coal-trading company in neighbouring Mozambique by buying a stake in a terminal that exports coal from South African mines.

While South Africa has quality coal reserves and is well positioned to export the fuel to India and China, shipments are constrained by limited port capacity. Only shareholders have an automatic right to export through Richards Bay, which accounts for almost all of the country’s coal-shipping capacity.

Other investors in the facility include Anglo American Plc, South 32 Ltd, and Glencore.

Oakbay Resources and Energy Ltd, a mining company controlled by the Guptas, will delist from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange this month after if was unable to find a new transfer secretary or sponsor to comply with exchange rules.

In November, South Africa’s anti-graft ombudsman published a report saying Zuma and some ministers may have breached the government’s code of ethics in their relationship with the Gupta family. — Bloomberg