Karpowership, the Turkish company seeking to supply 1.2GW of electricity to South Africa, said it doesn’t plan to abandon its work in the country even after setbacks to all three projects.
The department of forestry, fisheries & the environment rejected an application to moor a ship-mounted power plant capable of generating about 450MW at the Coega harbour in the Eastern Cape and Karpowership temporarily withdrew an application for a plant of the same size at Richards Bay on the east coast. The request for a 320MW plant in Saldanha on the west coast was suspended pending an investigation into allegations made by an environmental nonprofit.
Karpowership said it will seek a solution to the Coega rejection, has responded to the allegations and will resubmit the Richards Bay application when an administrative error is rectified.
“For three years, Karpowership SA has been subjected to multiple, unfounded allegations about its proposed gas-to-power projects,” the company said in a statement on Monday. “It is South Africans who will suffer from these further delays in getting Karpowership SA’s proposed projects up and running.”
Read: Karpowership demands retraction from De Ruyter over TV interview
A shortage of generation capacity is causing load shedding of up to 12 hours a day. The Turkish company won a tender in March 2021 to supply the electricity, but has since been mired in lawsuits and environmental challenges. — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP
