Mungo Soggot
THE Mossgas market testing exercise revealed that one company suspects the sea-bed off Mossel Bay contained huge gas reserves, officials said this week.
The company, a United States exploration operation, expressed interest in buying the rights to the gas. If the deal went through, the company, which has asked to remain anonymous, would strike a deal with the government to supply Mossgas with gas for up to 20 years. It would then pipe the rest of the gas to the Western Cape, say officials keen on the idea. These same officials believe Mossgas should remain in state hands for the time being.
However, an adviser linked to the process was wary of his colleagues’ and the US company’s enthusiasm. He pointed out that this same enthusiasm led former president PW Botha to build Mossgas to cater for much more gas than was proven by the US experts originally brought in to advise on the synthetic fuel project. That enthusiasm made the R12-billion plant one of apartheid’s greatest white elephants, he said. “Enthusiasm is not a substitute for exploration. Companies spend hundreds-of-millions exploring and then find nothing. In a way, these people have less to go on than even Botha.”
A Soekor official confirmed this scepticism, saying there was an enormous difference between proven gas reserves and possible gas reserves. He said all that was proven was enough gas to keep Mossgas going until 2005 — and this would have to be linked up in two stages. Last week the government gave the green light to a R910-million project that will extend Mossgas’s life until 2001.
He was also not convinced by the argument that Soekor had not found the gas in all the years it had been exploring the area because it had been concentrating on finding oil, as Mossgas, its only gas client, paid a cut price for gas.