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Eskom to pressure DME on licenses Posted: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 [miningmx.com] -- ESKOM is trying to get the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) to speed up the granting of new order mining rights on certain coal projects as part of its efforts to increase coal supply to its power stations. Speaking at the McCloskey South African coal export conference in Cape Town, Rob Lines, GM for primary generation at Eskom said the utility had “a list of coal resources that we need to tap into.” He added: “This is being discussed with the DME which is a rather delicate situation. The DME needs to do what it needs to do but we cannot simply sit by and watch them move slowly. We are interacting them with them on a continuous basis on this.” Commenting on Lines’ statement in her presentation to the conference Fleur Honeywill, MD of BEE junior coal company HCI Khusela Coal, said junior coal companies were in a position to supply more coal to Eskom immediately but could not because of the delays in being granted mining rights. “It takes a year to get a mining right and that time seems to be taken up mainly in the shuffling of documents from the regional DME office to Pretoria and back. “I don’t understand why the government cannot speed up this process. We have the the coal and the flexibility to supply it. We have the earthmoving equipment standing by to start developing the mine but we don’t have the mining right needed to be able to do it. “I believe Eskom needs to intervene with the DME to speed up the process of securing the granting of these mining rights.” Lines said none of Eskom’s recent generation problems had been caused by any power station running out of coal but he confirmed that supplies had run critically short on certain of the stations. “I can categorically state there were no load losses because a station did not have coal to burn but two of our stations got down to having just three days of stocks left. “We are currently picking that stock position back up and we are doing it without having to resort to emergency measures. We now have five to six days stocks in place and are improving that position on a daily basis despite the continuing very high burn rate on our power stations.” Lines confirmed comments from Anglo Coal SA CEO, Ben Magara, made at the conference on Thursday, that Eskom needed to increase its total stocks by 5.4 million tonnes over the new few months so that its power stations can meet peak demand over the winter. Lines added: “Moving that amount of coal around by road will be a formidable task.” Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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