News Flash
- Bloomberg reports that South Africa’s cash-strapped power utility Eskom has asked the National Treasury for R19 billion to buy diesel to fuel auxiliary power plants.
- The request is unlikely to be heeded, said Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.
“We don’t have it,” Godongwana said in an interview at Bloomberg’s office in Johannesburg.
While Eskom tries to secure funding from treasury, Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, managed to secure 50 million litres of diesel courtesy of PetroSA.
South Africa is in a massive energy crisis. The move comes at a time when Eskom loadshedding has intensified and become more erratic. Read more
Eskom reports that the continued implementation of loadshedding is mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves. Of the their 44000MW total capacity, Eskom this past week had 6000MW on planned maintenance, while another 14160MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
