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On-The-Air (31/10/2014)

31st October 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: New mechanised mining courses at Wits university are already attracting 300 participants a year.

Creamer: We have been speaking about mechanised mining and, of course, people have been listening to this, particularly those involved in mining. The skills side of it is so important, because it either makes or breaks it. Wits has come to the party with their Centre for Mechanised Mining Systems has been established and already 300 people are going to come through courses this year. This is just the start and they are expecting much bigger numbers.

It is done at master’s degree level and also at national qualification framework (NQF) nine. They are also hoping to bring it down to NQF6 because of that demand for shift-boss level to able to look after these mechanised sections in mines. We can see that the productivity issue is huge now in mines. We have got to up our game and the risk to award ratio workers are wanting more and if we mechanise they can be paid at better levels.

We see a lot of mechanisation going on in the platinum space at the moment. We hear that they have already got X-box controlled systems. They say every student coming out of school knows how to work an X-box and they can now work this equipment remotely, which is far more safe.

Kamwendo: That is fascinating and you have been banging on about this one for quite some time, so good to see that people are actually listening.

Shale gas received a major boost this week when the government gave the nod for application processing to proceed.

Creamer: We have had a moratorium on shale gas exploration and on fracking. At the level of the Petroleum Agency South Africa (PASA) where you actually apply to get these rights for gas in an area, this week they allowed the early applicants which came in at 2011 when the whole world was rushing around for shale gas activity and some of the people that got in there and had to wait all this time.

Now, the new Minister Ramathlodi is keen on this oil and gas situation and is even bringing it into a separate legal framework, it seems. He has given the thumbs up now for people to start processing those applications which have been delayed because of the whole moratorium.

One of the first in, of course, is quite a shock, because it is called Bundu, but it is really 95% Australian owned. So again the Australians beating us to the punch and there is a 5% BEE partner Don Ncube. They are in a sweet spot, because this is where the drilling was done by the old Soekor, the State Corporation that used to look for oil and gas. When they drilled there, the story is that there was such a burst of gas that they had to plug it very quickly.

It shows you that the Australians got to this sweet spot before all of us. Also given the thumbs up is Shell, which is also allowed to go ahead with their processing and also Falcon Oil. Coming through now, permission to start moving along on this.

Kamwendo: A coal-gas roadmap is being drawn up to get energy from coal without having to mine it.

Creamer: There is 44-billion tons of coal underground that we can’t access through mining. So, they want to start with that where you can actually drill down and ignite the coal that is underground and you can pipe the gas to surface.

That energy is wonderful, because you don’t have all the traditional costs involved with mining. We see now that just as we had a roadmap for coal, we are now getting a roadmap drawn up for underground coal gasification, which is a cleaner form of mining. It is a cleaner form of energy so it is a new era.

We see activity in the Free State, a private sector company has already got engineering studies involved and is really wanting to go, because it is awaiting Eskom to give permission to independent power producers to go ahead. They say that they can have a 50 MW pretty quickly and we know that Eskom has been doing underground coal gasification for the last seven years at its Majuba power station in Mpumalanga.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.

 

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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