Gas pipeline could be power solution or a pipe dream
March 17, 2008
By Donwald Pressly
Just as I was hurtling off to listen to the minerals and energy portfolio committee discuss ways of integrating liquefied petroleum gas into the energy system to reduce our national dependence on electricity, the service officer serving the media delivered yet another departmental strategies and tactics document to my office door.
This stuff is required reading for anybody suffering from insomnia - it is instant coma-inducing material. Only public administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi's speeches and briefing documents beat it for incomprehensibility.
These documents have been spewed out over the years by a government paralysed by planning and an endless round of meetings - which include the burgeoning communications staff of most departments.
The standard response to media queries is: "He (or she) is in a meeting with the minister and the director-general." This statement is particularly true of public enterprises, transport, and trade and industry - the departments of delivery.
Bogged down as it is in procedures, crafting expensive and glossy documents, it is no wonder that the delivery wheels are coming off in the 11th hour of President Thabo Mbeki's government.
To be fair, the state has rolled out free water and electricity to the many; it has installed flushing loos from Mdantsane to Polokwane; it has built houses for the homeless. But there is now no certainty that the newly empowered, or indeed the previously empowered, will be able to switch on the lights or the kettle.
Somehow Mbeki's government has taken too close a look at the detail and missed the bigger picture. Hence the frantic debates about the power crisis.
Should whole cities shut down for several hours a day? Can we roll out a gas pipeline from Angola or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to enable people to at least cook in the darkness?
The pipeline was the suggestion of minerals and energy deputy director-general Nhlanhla Gumede, who acknowledged that it would be a complicated business, as it would need to cross a number of borders and would involve the World Bank.
It was suggested at the committee that gas was, indeed, suitable for cooking but not for running fridges, washing machines or putting on the lights.
Meanwhile, University of Cape Town Business School professor Anton Eberhard suggests that we allow private sector interests to buy some power stations. This would effectively release the capital to Eskom to build new generation capacity at the least cost, without borrowing from the taxpayer.
I thought that was a splendid idea - articulated, by the way, in a national magazine - but it would be a complete non-starter if Mbeki's ministers have anything to do with it.
I would not hold out much hope for it under a Jacob Zuma government either, given that his allies in Cosatu are hardly gladiators for privatisation.
The minerals department appears to be steering in the opposite direction anyway. It suggested to MPs that if there was a gas grid, it must be administered by a state-owned enterprise and the price of gas should be regulated - and possibly subsidised - to ensure that the poor could afford it.
The strategy plan I received, by the way, was for the foreign affairs department from this year to 2011. It refers to facilitating the implementation of priority sectors for the New Partnership for Africa's Development, including infrastructure, agriculture, science and technology. Hopefully there is space for foreign affairs - with minerals and energy - to deal with gas pipelines from the DRC and Angola.
Maybe this government is better at pipe dreams than pipelines.
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