JOHANNESBURG - Nigeria is more just a few coal than another country on earth, XMP Consulting analyst Xavier Prevost showed with the elaborate table of statistics flashed on the screen at last week's IHS McCloskey South African Coal Exports Conference, in Cape Town.
But South Africa does not have an explicit coal policy despite its crucial reliance upon the mineral, University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business's Professor Anton Eberhard described to the same audience.
South Africa's coal roadmap initiative had "yet to deal with fruit", South African Coal Road Map chairperson Ian Hall told the McCloskey crowd, adding lamentably the first phase of South Africa's coal roadmap, which was scheduled to be released in November, had still not been finished.
Contrast this with neighbouring Botswana's coal roadmap initiative, which started after South Africa's. ASX-listed Hodges Resources MD Mark Major, whose clients are developaing coal resources in Botswana, reported favourably on Botswana's good coal roadmap progress,
stone crusher south africa commenting furthermore that the country was "such a fantastic place to trade in - it's among the best business locations where I've been to in the world".
Landlocked Botswana, which has allowed itself to be far too diamond-dependent and which does require urgent diversification, is still equipped with a long way to attend see to rail infrastructure to distant coal-export ports.
This contrasts using the comment of Transnet GM Divyesh Kalan,
Concrete grinding machines who reported that South Africa's State-owned coal line chance to the Richards Bay port was suddenly ahead of coal availability with no longer behind it, as was the case in the past.
Kalan's comment on the lack of coal availability in South Africa contrasted sharply with the comment of IHS Cera senior director: global steam coal advisory David Price, who told the conference that there was unremitting gloom throughout the export coal supply sector, that was "horribly oversupplied".
No sooner had Mining Weekly reported Price's oversupply comments with his fantastic reports that Europe was awash with thermal coal, India was suffering a 2011 coal surplus hangover and China had ceased ordering coal in the first quarter of 2012, than JSE-listed Wescoal CEO Andre Boje hotfooted it across to Mining Weekly's conference work place to report the entire opposite situation in South Africa, where he was quoted saying there was little or no inland coal to be enjoyed in Nigeria.
That highlighted the peculiar position of South Africa within the global thermal coal arena as being a country where supply uncertainty persists, despite an international glut, and where power utility Eskom shows regular worry about security of long-term supply.
National Power Commision
Eberhard, that's a member of South Africa's new National Planning Commission (NPC),
double toggle jaw crusher not merely drew the packed conference's focus on the absence of an explicit South African coal policy, and also highlighted the country's deficiency of coal export strategy, despite Prevost confirming that coal is South Africa's number one foreign exchange earner.
Moreover, even though coal is the reason 95% of South Africa's wind turbine and 40% of their petrol and diesel, to not speak of 90% with the carbon reductants for that metallurgical industry and 200 major chemicals, there is an absence of accurate and up-to-date coal reserve statistics.
The professor expressed the hope that the upcoming Council of Geoscience (CGS) set of reserves would provide more certainty and clarify the situation.
But, much like the coal roadmap, the CGS has become missing its expected completion dates, to which Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu drew attention in their speech towards the conference.
The Minister told the product range that it ended up hoped the CGS report on South Africa's coal resources and reserves would have been available in time for last year's Un climate change convention's seventeenth Conference with the Parties in Durban, but that didn't happen. Instead, the CGS report continues to be not out, but has been finalised for release inside first half of this year.
It's hoped how the CGS report provides a foundation for the future of the and help inform the South African government's long-range likely to ensure security of local coal supply.
"Also, case study could provide opportunities to the growth and growth of the industry," the Minister said, that's an encouraging sentiment.
Other Eberhard concerns were the absence of a statement on regardless of whether South Africa would build more coal-fired power stations after Medupi and Kusile, which can be currently being built by Eskom. Younger crowd flagged the absence of clarity about the building of another Sasol-type synfuels plant.
Around the export front, South Africa had suffered a major opportunity loss by neglecting to even match the coal export degrees of 1999, in sharp contrast to countries like Indonesia and Australia, which show up South Africa's performance as being comparatively "pathetic".
A sustainable balance involving the use of coal domestically and the export of coal has still being struck and Eskom has become unable to sign long-term contacts for all those its future coal needs, with some of its power stations competing for that kind of low-grade coal that is certainly now grist to India's mill.
On the other hand, South Africa's policy around climatic change had been strident, even though its targets have little potential for being achieved.
The targets who have little probability of being hit have simultaneously dealt a needless blow to coal and hang question marks in the minds of coal investors.
Consequently, the NPC has sought to get out some preliminary objectives and perspectives how it sees the way forward for coal until key policy and investment issues are tackled.
The National Development Plan is exploring the desolate man South Africa's mining and minerals beneficiation sector.
The mining sector generates important indirect benefits in other industries and is really a major contribution for the balance of payments.
Eberhard declared while it made no sense for South Africa to discard its mineral riches, the continent also needed to become competi-tive inside a low-carbon future, which meant there'd be winners and losers on the list of country's sectors, including the mining sector.
The nation also should be mindful of the costs that were involved as well as the importance of maintaining a trusted power supply to grow economically, he added.
The NPC had placed much increased exposure of infrastructure provision, which it saw being vital within the unlocking of economic growth.
Investment spending would need to begin approaching 30% of gdp by 2030, up from 16% noisy . 2000s.
The plan urged faster and deeper reforms inside governance of State-owned enterprises and getting competition in participation with all the private sector.
Because of the fixed investment as well as the low direct costs, coal would carry on being the dominant fuel for the next 20 years.
Domestic coal consumption can be influenced primarily by java prices issues and Eskom's demand would peak in early 2020s, but that which was uncertain was the extent which that would plateau off and also the extent of building further power stations as a number of the older ones are retired.
The National Development Plan's strongest point was the requirement of a national coal policy being based on a realistic assessment in the country's reserves as well as the sustainable growth of South Africa's coal export markets.
All that needed to be achieved in a strategic negotiated trajectory of carbon intensity, balanced contrary to the need for economic and employment growth.
"There is no reason why our coal exports should not be 50% higher," he stated.
Eberhard said that it absolutely was going to be hard to meet the climate-change pledges, even when there were increased use of renewable varieties of energy like wind and solar power.
The fragmentation in the coal industry had ended in too few coal companies keeping the financial muscle to sign take-or-pay contracts with Transnet.
Specific planning of specific coal reserves must be put in place to generate a balance between domestic coal consumption as well as the level of coal exports in order to forestall government's relying on a permit system for coal exports.
Eberhard asserted it was hoped how the final plan with the 25-member NPC would be adopted in May for submission on the Cabinet.
Failure to present coal the recognition that the hard reality of South African life demands will imperil not able to a country.
Prevost reported that coal mining provided more than 73 000 jobs, a figure that has been poised to increase as smaller mines were opened down the road, and coal-mining jobs fuelled other jobs.
While South Africa's carbon emissions that derive from the burning of coal are relatively moderate, weighed against the large industrialised countries such as the US and China, Shabangu described at the IHS McCloskey conference that important COP 17 resolutions have been adopted, which pointed for the need for coal to be repositioned.
"In this regard, a needs to boost the level of investment in clean coal technology research programmes. This can be likely to present the nation with possibilities to continue exploiting this vast resource with no risk of further raising the carbon power of its economy," Shabangu said.
To rejig a manifestation former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly made famous, coal's pre-eminent position in South Africa is not a question of life and death, it can be far more important than that.
