'King Coal's' cash to burn

20 May 2015 - 02:18 By Jan-Jan Joubert

DA MP Pieter van Dalen stole the show in the parliamentary debate on energy yesterday when he called Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa the "king of coal" because of the money his companies have made from selling coal to Eskom. Said Van Dalen: "Shanduka has over the years become the biggest owner of coal mines. Shanduka was the frontrunner in terms of coal production [with] 50% of the junior mining sector's producer market share."Isn't it strange that Deputy President Ramaphosa is now leading the war room on energy?"We want the special pricing agreements for coal between Shanduka/Glencore and Eskom to be open [because] the price increases form a large part of the crisis we face today."Implementation of the controversial deal to acquire nuclear energy, worth billions of rands, will begin in the second half of this year, Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said.Many fear that the process will involve a sweetheart deal with Russia and prove to be an even greater scandal than the arms deal.Joemat-Pettersson said: "We will commence with the actual nuclear procurement process in the second quarter of this financial year to select a strategic partner or partners in a competitive, fair, transparent and cost-effective manner. We expect to present the outcome of this procurement process to the cabinet by year-end."She said the cabinet had approved the generation of 9600MW of nuclear power, with the first generator to be commissioned by 2023.She conceded that the government' s lack of timely co-ordination, planning, alignment and implementation of energy programmes had created serious problems.DA MP Ian Ollis said that, in the first 100 days of 2015, South Africa had experienced about 33 days of blackouts - a record.Ollis claimed that the government's integrated resources plan of 2013 was being hidden in the same way as the International Atomic Energy Agency's country report- because it shows that South Africa cannot safely implement a nuclear power programme.Ollis said that, as long as the Independent Systems Market Operator Bill was shelved by the ANC, it would not be possible for electricity prices to be reduced...

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