Friday, September 20, 2024

Eskom and energy and chemical organization, Sasol, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to "collaboratively discover and investigate potential future liquified natural gas (LNG) requirements".

This is according to a joint statement by the two businesses, following the signing ceremony of the MoU on Friday.

"The collaboration aims to ascertain the likely volumes that South Africa necessitates to establish a feasible LNG import market place, along with the enabling infrastructure, and may be facilitated by authorities-to-govt relations in which essential."

"This initiative concentrates on making use of gas for electrical power generation to offer crucial base load energy and position gas being a key enabler of re-industrialisation, even though also guaranteeing continued supply to the market by unlocking world LNG resources.

"Furthermore, the collaboration will contribute to enhancing South Africa’s energy mix and enable the country's energy transition and decarbonisation," the joint statement read.

The MoU is expected to "explore sourcing gas within South Africa, the sasol bursaries Southern African Development Community region, and other parts of the African continent, in addition to evaluating long-term LNG contracting".

"This will support the gas requirements for Eskom’s planned coal power station repowering and conversion to gas in the long term. The parties will also engage other state entities to enable an LNG value chain in South Africa.

"As part of its revised gas strategy, Sasol is working on enabling the future supply of LNG to South Africa by collaborating with companies such as Eskom, existing and future customers, suppliers, and infrastructure developers.

"The research findings from the first phase of sasol learnerships the Sasol-Eskom collaboration will guide the necessary role players and investors required to offer the best prospects for South Africa's energy market, while outlining the challenges associated with the long-term commitments required for LNG imports," the statement said.