Botswana to open bids for coal-fired plants: official Thu May 10, 2012 1:09pm GMT
By Agnieszka Flak JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Botswana will issue a tender this year for two, 300 MW coal-fired power plants to be built by independent producers to meet rising demand in the landlocked southern African country, a senior government official said on Wednesday. One of the projects will be an expansion at the existing Morupule complex where Botswana's power utility BPC operates a coal-fired plant. The 300 MW expansion needs to come online by 2015/16. The other plant, due by 2018/19, can be built anywhere in the country, Nchidzi Mmolawa, Botswana's acting deputy permanent secretary for minerals, told Reuters in Johannesburg on the sidelines of a southern Africa Coaltrans conference. "The plan is to get the tenders out this year. If you can do it off your balance sheet, the better. So the first 300 MW and the other 300 MW will be done through an IPP model," he said. The independent power producers will be chosen to build and operate the plants and later sell the electricity to BPC. Botswana hopes to boost the development of its coal mining sector, where currently only 3 million tonnes of coal are produced each year, Mmolawa said. A tender for new prospecting licences is currently ongoing. Mmolawa said the country had available coal resources of over 200 billion tonnes, which should be exploited to boost power generation in the country and the region and to supply growing demand for coal from Asia.
"The current situation is that countries are so in demand that they are seeking coal from wherever they can get it from," he said in response to questions about competition from the region, where South Africa is a major coal exporter and Mozambique is ramping up to become a key coal player. The growth of the Botswana coal industry hinges largely on the need to develop necessary rail and port infrastructure. There are studies ongoing which explore the options of exporting coal either through Namibia or Mozambique and Botswana, together with the private sector, hopes to soon make a decision which port makes for the more economically feasible solution, Mmolawa said.
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