International mining group Anglo American would consider an investment into one of the two new coal-fired power stations in being built by South Africa's Eskom in order to secure its own electricity supply, a leading media group reported on Wednesday.

Quoting CEO Cynthia Carroll, Sake24.com reported that Anglo would also consider investing in a power station if necessary. But Carroll stressed that such an investment would not be on a "grand scale", and that Anglo would not want to be an operator.

Her comments indicated that there could indeed be takers for a stake in the R142-billion Kusile plant, which Eskom is currently building in South Africa's Mpumalanga province.

The State-owned electricity utility had been given a mandate to seek investors for a 30% stake in Kusile, as a way of dealing with a severe funding constraint. It was also possible that the stake on offer could be increased to 49%, but no board or shareholder mandate had been received for such a transaction.

However, the powerful Congress and South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) had already expressed its opposition to the inclusion of private equity partners at any of Eskom's power stations. The labour federation described such a move as privatisation, which should be opposed on principle, as the opening up of the sector to the private sector would further accelerate price increases.

However, Eskom acting chairperson Mpho Makwana has insisted that the transaction would not be a "privatisation exercise". He said that Eskom had been given no mandate to pursue privatisation, but that it would seek private equity participation on a project basis to support its fundraising efforts.

Eskom was also seeking steep tariff increases of 35% a year between 2010 and 2013 to part fund an average yearly capital expenditure budget of R103-billion, as well as to create the balance sheet and income statement conditions to raise nononerous debt.

Makwana indicated that the target was to raise R40-billion from private equity participation at Kusile.

Nevertheless, most electricity industry commentators have questioned whether Eskom could attract any interest in Kusile at all, owing to the fact that there would be no way to influence the cost of the project, while the minority stake offered no control over the project or the operation.

In fact, some commentators have even argued that it would be preferable for Eskom to offer existing assets for sale, rather than a minority position in a project considered expensive in global terms.

However, Carroll's statement indicated that there might well be an appetite among those energy-intensive consumers seeking to secure power supply in the context of an ever tightening supply/demand balance in South Africa.

But Engineering News Online has learned that companies such as Anglo and Xstrata were also studying their own 600-MW-type power generation facilities, which could well prove more attractive than an investment in Kusile.

"Why should miners invest in what is arguably the most expensive power project in the world, when they could build their own capacity far cheaper?" one mining executive mused, when canvassed for a view on the issue.

In fact, Anglo's own Ian Langridge, speaking on behalf of the Energy Intensive User Group during recent hearings into Eskom's application for tariff increases, asserted that Eskom had procured the Kusile plant at the peak of the power equipment cycle, making it "too expensive and too late".