Warning for South Africans who use diesel

Adulterated diesel is becoming increasingly popular in South Africa amid rising prices and concerns about potential supply shortages. 

This practice enables sellers not only to sell more fuel from the same effective supply but also to see their profit margins widen significantly. 

While it enhances the sellers’ margins and makes them more money, it creates a series of problems for users down the line. 

Adulterated fuels can cause high-pressure pumps in diesel engines to wear out and seize, clog injectors, and lead to failures. 

Furthermore, the adulterated diesel does not burn cleanly, leading to increased emissions and toxic smoke from vehicles. 

ESG Analytics economist Sifiso Skenjana said this is becoming a much more serious issue in South Africa, with hundreds of petrol stations involved in adulterating fuel. 

This is despite the government’s efforts to clamp down on the practice and its promises to enforce proper regulations on sellers. 

Skenjana explained to 702 that as diesel prices rise, there is a greater incentive for sellers to engage in the practice, as potential profits surge. 

“The government has been looking at regulations surrounding diesel, specifically in recent years, because of the fact that people are pricing it differently,” Skenjana said. 

“This is opening the window for illicit trade because people are finding ways to mix the diesel with other fuels to make dirty diesel.” 

Adulteration typically involves blending diesel with substances that have similar physical properties but are much cheaper, such as kerosene, paraffin, and lubricating oil. 

In South Africa, paraffin is the most commonly used substance due to its availability and the way the price is regulated, which often makes it relatively cheap to use for this purpose. 

Skenjana explained that this is a side effect of the government’s attempts to clamp down on the significant variances in paraffin pricing that existed in the past. 

“The first promise from the government came around the paraffin issue, because every time the fuel price rose, there was a disproportionate rise in paraffin prices,” Skenajana explained. 

“The uses of paraffin are mostly among the lower-income earners in the economy, and so there was a significant question around the pricing of paraffin, which the government acted on.”

This has made paraffin a relatively cheap alternative because it is not subject to the significant taxes and levies that apply to fuel. 

Only getting worse

The problem of so-called dirty diesel is only getting worse in South Africa, despite government attempts to crack down on the practice. 

Skenjana pointed to data from Bidvest Protea Coin, which has identified more than 100 suspected illicit fuel depots across the country. 

Bidvest Protea Coin COO Waal de Waal told eNCA that this data was collected by the company’s helicopter surveillance team over the past few months, during flights across several provinces. 

“Mixing and blending have been around for years, but on a very small scale. But these days, it’s just getting out of hand,” De Waal said. 

He explained that the issue is fundamentally due to the significant price difference between paraffin and diesel, which has persisted in recent years. 

Even though it has closed more recently, the opportunity afforded to sellers by the energy shock from the Middle East will increase the financial incentive to engage in such practices. 

This is coupled with the widespread availability of paraffin in South Africa, making enforcement extremely difficult and cumbersome. 

“Paraffin in this country can’t be sold without a marker. It’s called an A1 marker specifically for a reason so that SARS and the DMRE can monitor,” De Waal said. 

These safeguards are relatively easy for criminals to bypass, with mechanisms to remove the identifying markers from paraffin enabling it to be blended with diesel. 

There is also a lack of equipment that enables SARS and other enforcement agencies to pick up the marker in paraffin, making it relatively easy to avoid scrutiny. 

SARS has attempted to crack down on the illicit practice, with an enforcement operation in 2025 resulting in several arrests and the seizure of 2 million litres of fuel.