On-The-Air (13/03/2015)

13th March 2015

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: Sasol is working with the electricity ‘war room’ on a plan to import gas.

Creamer: Sasol has let it be known that it is talking to the government and parastatals connected with this sort of activity to have a sort of a floating gas platform or some sort of LNG, which is liquefied natural gas, brought in to the country as a quick measure because of the volumes of diesel that we are using at the moment.

They will either bring this in through the US or the Middle East, so imported at this stage, because it will virtually decimate the prices of what we are paying for diesel or get those OCGT plants, the open-cycle gas-turbine plants, which are wrongly named, because they don't use gas they use diesel, running at a much cheaper rate.

Sasol is wanting to do this more as a thought leader and a deal doer and a project manager and advise rather then get totally involved. We know that Sasol has done very well in bringing gas down from Mozambique more then ten years ago. It set a 800 km pipeline coming down from Mozambique. So, gas is becoming a big thing. We see the troubles in Eskom, that one big point was primary energy supply, that coal and diesel.

We need to do something about that and gas can be a very big factor in this. Sasol is also saying that they can actually produce more electricity themselves. They are producing about 1 100 MW at the moment and they say they can push that up to 1 500 MW and either put that into the grid or otherwise use it themselves so that Eskom wont have to supply them. All those talks going on at the moment and the price agreement that they have with Eskom coming up for renewal this very month.

Kamwendo: Previously exported coal is now being offered to Eskom at attractive prices.

Creamer: Again, with the big shock announcement yesterday with the suspensions of the top brass, one of the big factors they were talking about was primary energy and getting coal at the right price. We know that Eskom has been worried, because a lot of the coal leaves the country.

They have been asking the government to declare it a strategic mineral, but that would take an enormous amount of time, because it would go against the constitution. So, in the interim, what do you do? We find now that Optimum Coal, which is due to stop exporting, it has 5-million tons and saying that in the long-term they don’t see this mine as a continual exporter of coal.

Already it is supplying 5-million tons to Eskom’s Hendrina power station and saying that they want to continue to do that, but they don't want to export the other 5-million tons. This is now available and people are saying you can’t give us export coal. What they do is they process it to the Eskom spec and they price it appropriately. What do these coal miners sell? They sell heat and so they give you the correct calorific value at the appropriate price.

This is what is on offer now from Optimum Coal mine, which is part of the Glencore group. It seems to be a situation that will be a win-win-win. If they don’t come through with this, you are putting 1 500 jobs at risk, 1 000 workers plus 500 contractors. The National Union of Mineworkers is saying please do something, anything you can do to keep these jobs going.

These can be kept as we said, the offer is on to Eskom, again as part of the big thing this coal won’t go out of the country, it will go no only to the Hendrina power station, which is already in place, but appropriately processed and appropriately priced, it can also go to the Arnot power station, the Tutuka power station, Camden power station. I think it is something Eskom should grasp particularly given the background instability now that is being created over the suspension where there is a lack of transparency.

It is as clear us mud what is going on. Also, it is unfortunate that journalists weren’t even given time to ask questions yesterday, that was cut short.

Kamwendo: Plans are afoot to erect monuments to dead mineworkers and produce documentaries on the horrors of mining’s past.

Creamer: This came up at Coalsafe yesterday and the coal mining industry is probably the least guilty of all the people that have actually caused mine workers to lose their lives. They got the best statistics out and the gold mining the worse statistics out.

When they had their meeting yesterday, there was a lot of passion and a lot of solemnity. David Msiza who is the Mineral Resources Department chief inspector of mines flashed up pictures of rows and rows of graves from at Evander gold mine nameless graves of people who died anonymously.

Also, the stark concentration camp like hostel that had been built in the middle of the cemetery. He is saying the horrors of the past need to propel us know towards zero harm. We want to get a zero harm, but we will see where we have come from, we have come from very difficult situations. This can propel us and if we build monuments and he is saying that this will be done, that monuments will be built to dead miners.

Documentaries will be created to show the horrors of mining’s past. We know that this was brought up at the 90th anniversary of Wits University when former AngloGold Ashanti CEO said there is so much blood and human lives lost in this that this really deserves a Vietnam-type memorial where you recognise each person who has died by name. We know that the study done by Judge Ramon Leon into the deaths show that 69 000 were recorded as being killed in mining in the 20th Century.

That is a lot of people, but even worse, one million people were either injured, mained or physically damaged, which are horrific statistics. People are starting to say now that we should remember our past that it was really horrific so that we never fall back into that but propel us now to do much better. We saw that at Coalsafe 2015 held at Emperors Palace yesterday.

Kamwendo: Happy Anniversary, 34 years to the day today, and apparently it was also Friday the 13th when you launched the very first edition of Engineering News.

Creamer: That is correct. We started off with Engineering News on a borrowed desk in a borrowed office and our first edition was dated 13 March 1981. Exactly 34 years to the day and it happens to be Friday the 13th, which has turned out to be lucky for some.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.

 

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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