Motorists and pump attendants at some 18 500 diesel filling points will have to use mental arithmetic to calculate the cost of fuel when the price goes up on Wednesday, as some pumps are not able to handle more than three digits.

At these older pumps, motorists will have to multiply the amount on the pump by 10 to calculate what is owed for fuel.

Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said on Monday that the industry had given its assurances to the department that it would take between four and eight months to update these pumps.

He said approximately 30 percent of the country's pumps, at approximately 1350 retail sites, would be affected.

"This translates to approximately 18 500 filling points at which customers will experience a problem."

Display the 'x10' sticker

He said Minister Buyelwa Sonjica had, as an interim measure, approved that affected petrol stations could display the 'x10' sticker.

The South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) confirmed it had been in discussions with the DME regarding the pump pricing problem.

The DME has supported an interim proposal for these pumps to divide the reflected pump price by ten, and then multiply the total amount of the transaction by ten to obtain the amount to be paid by the customer, it said, adding that this was only an interim solution and was only applicable to diesel which would be priced at over R10 per litre.

"The price of petrol is not at this price as yet but a similar problem will arise on certain pumps if this does happen, and a similar interim solution will need to be applied at that time," Sapia said.

Diesel customers affected initially

Sapia chairperson Wessel Strauss said diesel customers would be affected initially, as the price would go up to R10.67 for a litre for high sulphur on Wednesday, and R11.72 for low sulphur.

"This whole price hike has caught a lot of people," said Strauss, explaining that the older model fuel pumps in the country could not display amounts over R9.99/l.

"If petrol costs R13 a litre, the pump will only show R1.30. So it will have to be multiplied by 10 in the short term.

"It's going to be confusing in the beginning, not only for the motorist, but for the petrol attendants as well," he said. "It's going to be a schlepp for the public."

Peter Morgan, director of the SA Fuel Retailers Association, said the association planned to fix stickers to the pumps to advise motorists of the interim measure while the oil companies altered the pumps.

Producing manual receipts

While the forecourt staff were trained, the back office would have extra work producing manual receipts for the amount generated on the pumps, but he believed it would be "pretty painless" for customers.

Shell said it was aware of the problem but that it would take time to change the pumps.

"Obviously this comes as a result of unforeseen and unprecedented oil prices.

"Unfortunately the inability to deal with the problem immediately is due to capacity problems and lead time in acquiring the necessary equipment," said spokesperson Dennis Matsane.

"In the interim, Shell will use a manual display of price at those sites that are affected and any other options available that will ensure that there is little or no disruption at all to the quality service that Shell provides to its customers," Matsane said.

Oil futures surged to a new record over $120 a barrel on Monday as supply threats emerged overseas and the dollar weakened against the euro, AP reported from New York.

Sapa