South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, said last week that it had scaled back its eight-year coal forecast by 30%, because of weaker demand as a result of the economic recession and a delay in its build programme.

Eskom’s chief officer for generation Brian Dames said that the utility would need almost a third less coal than originally expected to feed its power stations by 2018.

The company would require 141-million tons of coal a year by 2018, which was down from a previous estimate of 200-million, he said at a conference in Cape Town.

While Eskom had reduced its long-term coal demand by 30%, Dames stated that there was significant anxiety over where that coal would come from.

South Africa did not have coal mines with a large enough resource to match Eskom’s total current requirements, Dames told delegates at the South African Coal Exports Conference, and urged coal-miners to make investments in new projects.

Dames told Mining Weekly that Eskom believed that there was enough coal in South Africa to meet its demand, but said mining companies had to invest in new projects in order to exploit these untapped resources.

Dames also believed that the South African coal industry was still in a growth phase and had not reached its peak.

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