South African Utility Eskom Plans to Explore for Gas Offshore Mozambique

South African utility Eskom plans to exploit gas reserves off the east coast of Mozambique as early as next year, said SAnews on Tuesday.

The moves comes as Eskom could soon look into gas to satisfy most of the country’s electricity needs, utility’s acting CEO Collins Matjila told the SAnews.

“We are looking at exploiting gas reserves for use as a fuel input into our power [grid] in three stages, the first one – which is short term – we have got an opportunity that we are working on that would give us an equivalent of 600 Megawatts. That will happen in 18 months, but we will be able to secure that 600 MW from Mozambique,” he said.

He said the second phase would take Eskom about 18 to 24 months, and will see the utility piping gas to South Africa that will avail an equivalent of 5 000 Megawatts of power from Maputo through the Rovuma gas fields, said the news agency.

“There is a third stage in our gas strategy, but it includes the exploitation of gas reserves inside the country, shale gas in the Western Cape, and the coal bed methane gas in Mpumalanga, both of them which are fairly longer term,” Matjila was quoted as saying .