Business Day: SA ‘ignores’ vast Mozambique gasfield

South Africa’s revised 20-year energy draft plan "shockingly" ignores the vast Rovuma Basin gas find in Mozambique. It is the world’s fourth-largest known natural gas deposit, that would solve Eskom’s immediate energy crisis and avoid the costly construction of a third new coal power station.

This is according to Johan de Vos, CEO of Pretoria-based firm Gigajoule, which manages the distribution of natural gas in Mozambique in the piped gas network it built almost 10 years ago. Gigajoule has completed technical and feasibility studies which it says have demonstrated the economic viability of a 2,450km pipeline from Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique to Richards Bay in South Africa.

Mr de Vos says such a pipeline would cost $5bn. In terms of the study Gigajoule commissioned from consultants VGI, two anchor clients in the form of gas-fired power stations would be built: one in Maputo and one in Richards Bay, with a combined generation capacity of 5,000MW for another $5bn.

"We have worked for two years on this feasibility study and we know that if you build a 5,000MW power station at the end of the pipeline this project is bankable," he says.

With a price of $10bn, the pipeline-power station infrastructure investment was "cheaper than Medupi and will cost less to operate once all Medupi’s interest charges are added in", says Mr de Vos. MORE