During a media briefing on Wednesday, Eskom’s COO Jan Oberholzer warned South Africa that there could be a possibility of stage 6 load shedding being implemented.
This comes as the price of Brent crude oil continues to rise and is past $130 per litre due to the Ukraine invasion.
Eskom burns through 9 million litres diesel a day
According to Oberholzer, Eskom is currently burning through 9 million litres of diesel a day – which is not sustainable.
He continues by noting that if dam levels fall and diesel capacity also further drops, stage 6 may have to be implemented.
“We are delivering 100 tankers of diesel a day to Ankerlig power station, that is 4 million litres a day and between Ankerlig and Gourikwa. We are using 9 million litres of diesel a day – we are using a lot of money currently to top up the capacity from an emergency point of view, which is not sustainable.
“Should we run out of diesel at these power stations, this capacity will not be available to supply to the demand and will necessitate a further 3 stages of load shedding to be implemented, the combined effect will be 6 stages of load shedding,” says Oberholzer.
And although Oberholzer added that he feels much more positive for the rest of the year, the unreliability and unpredictability make it extremely difficult.
Diesel can only be afforded up to certain point
In a media briefing on Tuesday, Eskom’s CFO Calib Cassim also spoke about the continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and how it affects the power utility.
“With the war in Ukraine and Russia, oil and gas prices are escalating. We are looking at options… but if the price of oil has to double, it is going to impact the energy that we can produce from diesel going forward.”
Cassim concluded by explaining that Eskom will only be able to afford diesel up to a point. And then what?
“Eskom, from a cash flow perspective, can only afford so much on diesel, and we will get to a point where we just don’t have funds to pay for additional diesel beyond a certain point. We should look at the performance of the generation feed and that is the area we need to address to mitigate against future load shedding. But bottom line is, we don’t have the chequebook to continually spend on diesel.”
Stage 4 load shedding is currently implemented in South Africa.