Eskom says it is still within its budget for diesel after spending a whooping R9.2 billion to keep the lights on for some parts of the day as it battles with rolling blackouts.
On Saturday the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Eskom Generation Manager, Bheki Nxumalo, interim spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena and Head of Project Management in the Presidency Rudi Dicks held a media briefing in Pretoria to give the media a weekly update on the progress in implementing the Energy Action Plan to improve the supply of electricity.
“The year to-date, from the beginning of the financial year until the end of April (next year) the budget for diesel was R9.7 billion and the actual figure for the amount of diesel spent is R9.2 billion so we are well within budget in actual fact less than that.
“The short term objective of the Energy Action Plan is to reduce the severity and frequency of load shedding through immediate measures to improve the performance of Eskom’s existing power stations and stabilise the energy system,” said Dicks.
This year the country has been experiencing rolling black out with power utility now rotating it between Stage 3 and Stage 1 load shedding until Monday.
The Electricity Minister said there have been improvements in the electricity generation and with a decrease in demand Eskom will take this time to keep up the maintenance of the electricity grid.
Ramokgopa defended the money spent on diesel saying the power utility had to spend a lot money on diesel to protect the South African economy and this was part of the strategy to keep the lights on.
“We are within budget, in fact we are R600 million less than what we had planned to spend. So remember when I stood before you when we were sharing with you the Eskom winter outlook, I did say that it is going to be anchored on three interventions.
‘The first intervention was the continued improvement of the energy availability factor. The work that Mr Nxumalo and his competent team are doing. The second one was on working with the public and industry to reduce demand.
“The third one was the fact that we are going to ensure that we increase the exploitation of the peaking plants essentially to burn diesel to be able to protect the South African economy. So what we are sharing with you is nothing out of what we had promised.
“Essentially it is in keeping with that strategy and we did say even at the time that it is going to come at a great cost to the fiscus and that is why there has been those provisions there. The R8 billion provided for within Nersa approved tariffs structure and also the R22 billion from the National Treasury fiscal support.
“I really want to emphasise that we are not surprised by these numbers. It was always part of our deliberate strategy to protect the South African economy.
“We did answer the question that you have to make a choice on whether you continue to burn this diesel essentially spending a lot of money and protect the South African economy or allow the economy to go on free-fall while we could be spending some bits of money.
“Of course we don’t have that money bucket but we needed to do that to protect the economy,” he added.
Ramokgopa also said the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan will make an announcement on the new Eskom CEO in due course. On 24 February Eskom appointed Calib Cassim as acting CEO after the resignation of Andre de Ruyter.
