Saturday January 26, 07:34 PM
South African mines closed over weekend amid power crisis
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Diamond, gold and platinum mines in South Africa were shut for the weekend owing to an electricity shortage that has crippled the sector and left thousands of miners without work, officials said.
The country's major mining companies, such as the world's biggest diamond producer De Beers, were in a crisis meeting Saturday with public electricity company Eskom. The electrical provider had obliged the mines to suspend their operations the night before as it could not guarantee a steady supply.
"At the moment, things are as there were yesterday," De Beers spokesman Tom Tweedy told AFP. "There is no production. Our six mines are closed."
De Beers produces nearly 16 million carats per year and employs 5,100 workers in the country.
The situation is similar for gold mines in South Africa -- which produces the most gold in the world.
"Our mines are still closed. We are in ongoing discussions with Eskom," said Steve Lenahan, spokesman for AngloGold Ashanti, which employs 35,000 people in seven mines.
Harmony Gold spokeswoman Amelia Soares said "we are all in the same boat. All of our 20 gold mines are closed."
"We didn't take the night shift underground," she said. "There was a meeting with Eskom this morning to try to see how to take the operations forward on Monday."
No Eskom spokesperson was available Saturday.
The company announced Friday in a statement that it had "alerted its 138 largest industrial customers".
"Customers were requested to reduce their electricity usage to the minimum level possible," Eskom said in the statement, advising that the situation "is expected to prevail for two to four weeks."
Large parts of Africa's economic powerhouse have been intermittently plunged into darkness in recent weeks as Eskom imposes planned blackouts to conserve dwindling electricity supplies.
The commercial capital Johannesburg has been hardest hit, and analysts have warned of foreign investors taking flight as everything from factory production to traffic regulation has been affected.
"We are trying to find out what to assist Eskom in the objective of reaching a workable demand, so that at least we continue to operate," Chamber of Mines spokesperson Jabu Maphalala told AFP.
Following the closure of the mines, prices for gold and platinum reached record highs on the London stock market. Friday evening an ounce of gold was worth 918.25 dollars (625.96 euros) and platinum reached 1,701 dollars per ounce.
"It is the view of cabinet that the unprecedented unplanned power outages must now be treated as a national electricity emergency," said Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin.
Incapable of quickly increasing its electrical production capacity -- currently at 38,500 megawatts -- the South African government indicated it intends to reduce demand by hiking rates, implementing daily rations, as well as drawing on other sources of energy such as gas and solar power.
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