South African coal industry to reach tipping point in 2025

The South African coal industry will likely reach a tipping point by 2025, when renewable energy should be cheaper, both in terms of capital and operational expenditure, than existing coal-fired electricity capacity. This means that, by 2030, the South African coal landscape will look “completely different”, as domestic coal production is likely to start fragmenting and shutting down,  African Source Markets CEO Bevan Jones noted during a webinar on October 21. In the near-term, however, the …
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Koeberg Unit 2 returns to service

Unit 2 of the Koeberg nuclear power station on October 21 successfully completed its twenty-fourth outage since it first started to generate electricity. The unit is synchronised onto the electricity grid and will load up to full capacity by next week, power utility Eskom reports.
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Phola communities allowed to intervene in Thabong, South32 coal merger; SAEF’s application dismissed

The Competition Tribunal has dismissed the South African Energy Forum’s (SAEF’s) application to intervene in proceedings regarding the proposed large merger between Thabong Coal and South32 South Africa Coal Holdings (South African Energy Coal or SAEC).
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Renergen drilling programme back on track

Emerging domestic natural gas and helium producer Renergen’s re-drill of the inclined drilling programme (referred to as P2V2) at its flagship Virginia gas project, in the Free State, is expected to be at, or be close to, target by the end of the first week of November. In a statement on October 21, the JSE- and ASX-listed company confirmed that the re-drill had completed setting of the intermediate casing and that it was on track to drill through to the base of the Karoo and the targeted gas-bearing fault structures.
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