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# A company that owed PetroSA R825 million last year is now trying to have it liquidated
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nako-energy-petrosa-liquidation-application/
- Published: 2026-09-17T08:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T07:59:59.000Z
- Description: Nako Energy has asked the courts to liquidate PetroSA over R605.5 million it says the state oil company acknowledged owing in May 2025, a year after PetroSA sold it a diesel cargo it could not pay for.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

South Africa's state oil company has not refined anything since 2020\. What PetroSA does now is trade fuel, and one of the companies it traded with is asking the courts to shut it down. Business Day, which has the court papers, reports that Nako Energy has applied to liquidate PetroSA over a fuel debt of R605.5 million.

The founding affidavit, deposed by Nako's Nkosinathi Ngwenya, says PetroSA acknowledged in writing on 19 May 2025 that it owed that amount for petroleum products Nako had supplied, and then did not pay. PetroSA received the products, it says, there is no reason why Nako is not entitled to payment, and the only reason it has not been paid is that PetroSA is unable to. Nako says it has been given no reasons, and concludes the company may be commercially insolvent. PetroSA did not respond to requests for comment.

## The same relationship, with the debt running the other way

What makes this awkward is that the two companies have produced large debts pointing in opposite directions. amaBhungane reported in May 2025 that PetroSA had sold Nako a R933 million cargo of diesel the previous June, on 60 days' terms, to a company that did not qualify for credit and had put up no payment guarantees. Almost a year later Nako still owed R825 million, having made a final payment of R1.7 million in December 2024 and then stopped. Nqobani Mkhwanazi, whom amaBhungane identifies as Nako's chief executive, said at the time that PetroSA owed Nako a substantial sum and the parties were reconciling trades, an industry norm in his description.

## What PetroSA has left to pay with

Whether PetroSA can pay is a different question from whether it should. Mossel Bay closed in 2020 and trading fuel has been the only real business since, kept going largely by one client. amaBhungane reported that loadshedding drove its revenue from R11 billion in 2019 to R23 billion in 2024, and that at the height of it Eskom was taking 80% of its diesel from PetroSA.

Selling more did not mean earning more. The same reporting has PetroSA's demurrage bill, what a trader pays when ships sit waiting, going from R34 million to R389 million between 2023 and 2024, while operating losses widened from R1.5 billion to R1.7 billion. amaBhungane's own description of the company was technically insolvent, which is that outlet's characterisation rather than a court finding, just as Nako's insolvency claim is an allegation in its own papers.

One more thing does not fit. In May 2025 Ngwenya told amaBhungane the accounts had been settled and whatever issues existed resolved amicably. The acknowledgment of debt his affidavit now relies on is dated that same month. Business Day separately reported this week that South Africa spent about R76 billion more than it needed to importing refined fuel between 2021 and 2024, on notes published by Reserve Bank economists, with 5,400 jobs going as the refining capacity did. PetroSA is most of what is left of it.