Siemens AG said it is weighing a bid for a US$3.7 billion project as South Africa’s program to generate power from gas gains momentum.
“The process is moving now,” Siemens South Africa CEO Sabine Dall’Omo said in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. “South Africa is ready for foreign direct investment.”
Dall’Omo said Siemens has had “significant discussions” with potential partners about bidding for the contract to develop 3,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation at two ports on the east coast of South Africa.
The plan announced by the South African Department of Energy on Oct. 3 involves importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) to generate electricity sold under a 20-year power-purchase agreement with state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.
South African Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson declared gas power development a priority in August last year as the government tries to reduce the nation’s dependence on coal.
The program would create jobs and build generating capacity that consumes less water than existing coal-fired plants, Dalla’Omo said.
The bidding teams are next year to prequalify in April after making submissions in February, with a final request for proposals planned for August, according to the department.
Participants within a group may include the developer of the gas-fired plant, LNG supplier and fuel port and storage owner and operator.
“The timetable seems ambitious, given the complexity,” Tracy Lothian, vice president of LNG global market development for Exxon Mobil Corp, said last week at a conference in Cape Town.
Bidding consortia would need as much information as possible, she said.
Eskom CEO Brian Molefe created investor uncertainty in July when he questioned the need for procuring renewable electricity from private developers.
One month later, he refused to sign an agreement for a solar power plant that had already been approved by the government.
Siemens would require “certain clarity with regards to the role that Eskom will take” in the gas-to-power program, Dall’Omo said, adding that the utility is one of its customers.
While construction of the gas plants would be fairly standard, “the most complex and time-consuming portions will be the financing around the gas itself,” she said.
That includes hedging the foreign currency risk associated with purchasing LNG, which is priced in US dollars.
The project also requires third-party access to infrastructure so that LNG can be supplied to other power plants, as well as used in commercial, residential and transport applications, BMI Research said in a report on Thursday last week.
“We note upside risk to South African gas consumption forecasts, which are currently constrained by domestic production and pipeline imports,” BMI said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day