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SA mines to receive more power
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Thu, 06 Mar 2008
[miningmx.com] -- SOUTH Africa will progressivley supply mines with five percent more power to prevent thousands of job losses that mining companies were warning of after their electricity consumption was reduced to 90%.
Mines Minister Buyelwa Sonjica jumped the gun on Friday’s announcement by telling Bloomberg Television in Washington: “The situation is now under control, we have stabilised…That will give five more percent to the mining industry.''
Her spokesman Sputnik Ratau said the power increase would be phased in and decisions would be jointly made with the mining industry on which mines needed to be first to receive more electricity.
"We are looking at five percent more power for all the mines and this will be implemented in a progressive process. It should start this week," Ratau told Miningmx.
One of the questions that has been raised is the
sustainability of that power supply to the mines, particularly as the country moves towards winter when household energy consumption jumps sharply.
"It all depends on the (power supply) system. If we increase levels and we see instability in the system we would have to decide whether we stay where we are or do we reduce it again," Ratau said.
"You must remember that the power stations that had been shut for maintenance are coming back on line and that adds more supply and will help to keep the system stable," he said.
The mining industry has made a representation to the Department of Minerals and Energy, looking at each mine and what the impact is of operating at 90% of normal power consumption.
Gold Fields, for one, was very vocal about the impact. It said nearly 7,000 jobs were at risk and that it was looking at mothballing a number of shafts and delaying a depth-extension project.
Predictably, the unions screamed blue murder and threaten strike action is a single job was lost related to the power crisis. The unions are an extremely close ally and important support base for the ruling party.
The political backlash against the government and its perceived mismanagement of the monopolistic power utility Eskom would be enormous if thousands of people are laid off. One in three South Africans is unemployed and the social
consequences of this are evidenced in part by an appallingly high crime rate.
"The issue of jobs is a critical matter because it deals with people's lives. If we are able to do anything to lessen the possiblity to job losses that's what we'll do," Ratau said.
President Thabo Mbeki said the government was doing all it could to avoid job losses stemming from the power crisis. Eskom has said approvals for large construction projects that would consume a lot of power could be delayed by up to six months.
"We indeed would want to insist that we must do everything possible to ensure that this does not impact negatively on economic growth, that it does not impact negatively in the sense of job losses," Mbeki said in parliament on Thursday.
The South African mining industry directly employs 460,000 people.
“We don’t know how this process will unfold,” said Frans Barker from the Chamber of Mines.
The government and Eskom were warned
a decade ago that power infrastructure was inadequate. Eskom has outlined plans for new coal-fired plants, de-mothballing others combined with nuclear and gas-fired turbines to restore healthy power levels in coming years.
The mining sector, particularly the deep-level gold mines and hot underground platinum mines, has been under considerable strain since power utility Eskom declared force majeure on electricity supply in January, effectively shutting down production for a week.
Power was subsequently restored to 90% of normal consumption.
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