Company:
Astron Energy (Pty) Ltd.
Industry: Oil and Gas
Deadline: Nov 12, 2025
Job Type: Full Time
Experience: 5 years
Location: Northern Cape
Province:
Field: Engineering / Technical
Job Description
- Reporting to the Lead, Advanced Control at the Cape Town Refinery Technical Services department, the Mass Balance Engineer is responsible for generating and maintaining an accurate refinery mass balance on a daily and monthly basis. This includes reconciling process and movement data, maintaining model accuracy, and supporting inventory accounting at month-end. The role plays a critical part in ensuring data integrity for technical, operational, and financial processes, and will work closely with Process Engineering, Operations, Schedulers, and Finance to ensure consistency between physical movements, process data, and reported inventory levels.
Key Accountabilities
- Refinery Daily Mass Balance
- Compile and reconcile the daily refinery mass balance as per CDMS 4530.
- Reconcile daily oil transfers and movements using PI Process Book and Intelligent Movement Management (IMM) prior to running the daily SigmaFine model.
- Execute the daily mass balance case in SigmaFine and reconcile discrepancies.
- Update reconciled flow meter data and publish to PI.
- Target and track the SigmaFine model error (DX1) within 5%.
- Create and maintain weekly reconciliation reports; ensure alignment with process engineering balances.
- For clarity, the mass balance accounting for crude and feedstock entering the refinery process will commence ex ship and include the crude mass balance accounting at Oil Tanking storage facility.
- Month-End Stock Accounting
- Support Finance and Scheduling teams with bulk stock closure for month-end.
- Perform sampling activities (e.g., Karl Fisher tests on crude tanks) as needed.
- Build and run a monthly SigmaFine case to extract closing inventories, densities, and temperatures.
- Publish validated month-end data to PI and SAP HANA via SQL tools.
- Submit tank data using SQL Server Reporting Services on WD1.
- Assist Finance with troubleshooting inventory imbalances; reconcile discrepancies between technical and financial stock numbers.
- Validate Short-Term Planner and Scheduler data to ensure financial confidence in stock declarations.
Technical and Collaborative Support
- Provide data and technical support to Process Engineering and R&M teams.
- Ensure accurate meter performance through collaboration with instrumentation and maintenance teams.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of data quality, model accuracy, and reporting standards through the development of an action plan with actions owners and tracking actions to closure.
Technical Projects
- Support and lead technical projects and any related activities
Professional Qualifications & Certifications:
- BTech or BSc Engineering, preferably Chemical Engineering or Control & Instrumentation disciplines.
Work Experience:
- Minimum 5+ years of experience preferably as a process engineer or instrumentation (light current electrical)
- Experience with SigmaFine, PI (OSIsoft), IMM, and process data analysis tools an advantage
- Familiarity with inventory accounting, meter reconciliation, and regulatory reporting an advantage
Knowledge and skills:
- Sound understanding of refinery mass balance principles and engineering first principles.
- Strong analytical skills and proficiency with MS Excel and SQL-based tools.
- Affinity for working with specialised software (e.g., SigmaFine, IMM, PI).
- Good communication and collaboration skills across technical and commercial functions.
- High attention to detail and data integrity.
- Able to work extended hours during month-end or stock closure cycles.
- Demonstrates Astron Energy values in day-to-day work.
Application deadline:
- 11 November 2025
