Eskom’s secrecy with their financials could mean things are even worse than they’re admitting

South Africans should prepare themselves for a not-so festive holiday season in the dark, as no-one knows when, where or how Eskom, Treasury and Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan will find the money for the power utility to refill the open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) diesel tanks.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said yesterday he was not aware of how or when more diesel would be ordered, or when it would arrive in SA, if it was successfully ordered.

He had earlier admitted to energy expert Chris Yelland that Eskom had no money to buy diesel for its OCGTs until the start of its next financial year on 1 April.

“Diesel arrives on the terms you would have ordered it from the supplier,” he said when asked about the estimated delivery time, should the minister and Treasury somehow get the billions of rands needed.

Lack of transparency

Apart from the uncertainty, experts have expressed concern about the power utility’s lack of transparency which “got them in this mess in the first place”, while others questioned why Treasury and Gordhan’s urgent meeting with the board had not happened before the diesel ran out.

Independent economic and energy analyst Tshepo Kgadima warned that South Africans should be more than worried about Eskom’s admission that it did not have enough money to operate and said this was an extreme crisis.

“But something they have not mentioned, which is important, is the fact that Eskom has not yet released their financials because they have not finalised their bail-out from Treasury in order for them to be a going concern,” he added.

“Treasury has no choice but to cough up the money fast because if they don’t, this means we’ll be faced with higher stages of load shedding, which would make the grid more vulnerable to vandalism and theft of infrastructure.”

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Energy policy expert Professor Anton Eberhard said Eskom was also facing cash flow issues – funding diesel versus critical maintenance.

“The president will need to intervene. Not a good idea to be going into the ANC December conference with these power sector risks and levels of load shedding that are seriously [angering] everyone,” he noted in a series of tweets.

“[The] cost of unserved energy for South Africa’s economy is much higher than cost of running Eskom’s Ankerlig (1 327 megawatts) and Gourikwa (740MW) OCGT diesel peaker plants.”

He agreed with Kgadima that it was “not good enough” that Eskom had still not published its financial statements for the financial year ended 31 March 2022 so late in the year.

Eskom wants South Africans ‘to pay more’

ActionSA president Herman Mashaba said Eskom wanted South Africans to pay more for electricity, even as stage 5 load shedding returned.

The country had been besieged by load shedding for 14 years with the situation getting progressively worse.

Mashaba urged the National Energy Regulator of South Africa to consider the adversity experienced by South Africans when reviewing Eskom’s request for a 32% increase in tariffs.

“As we are forced to live with de facto semi-permanent rolling blackouts, on one thing I can agree with President Cyril Ramaphosa and his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya: it is difficult to remain optimistic when it is patently evident that the ANC government has no plan to end our energy crisis,” he said.

“The simple truth is that the ANC government failed to act when the crisis started, and has done little to remedy this over the past 14 years.

“The hardship this has caused South Africans is unforgivable.”

Meanwhile, after an “urgent” meeting on Sunday evening, Gordhan said the department of public enterprises would be engaging Eskom on the urgent issues, including looking for savings within existing Eskom funds for the ongoing purchase of diesel and maintenance.

ALSO READ: ‘Work is underway to fix Eskom’: Presidency says prospects of more load shedding ‘deeply disheartening’

“The assessment of the board on the challenges Eskom faces in current fleet of power stations and the exceptional interventions that must be made to create more reliability in the performance of power stations,” it read.

Eskom said stage 4 load shedding will be implemented continuously until 5am today. Thereafter stage 2 will be implemented daily at 5am-4pm, with stage 4 following from 4pm-5am.

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za