Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa yesterday announced the outcome of the first bid window of the Gas Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. His department said, “No preferred bidders were appointed and no generation capacity was awarded.”

The round “sought to procure 2 000MW of generation capacity”, and the department received four bids offering a total of 2 830MW in May, the department said. It described the round as “a first-of-its-kind procurement process in South Africa”.

The department said the request for proposals (RFP) “required bidders to provide assurances of gas supply for their bids”, and that although South Africa is “potentially well-endowed with natural gas”, it “imports most of its gas supply requirements from Mozambique and the country has no liquified natural gas receiving terminal”.

“The bidders were unable to provide gas supply assurances to the level required in the RFP. This is one of the main reasons that none of the bidders satisfied the mandatory functional criteria,” the department said.

“South Africa is not retreating from our gas-to-power objectives. As the first in Africa to take on this ambition, we are further enabled by this first procurement process to strengthen the conditions necessary to achieve them. Our responsibility now is to address the infrastructure, commercial and institutional conditions required to translate market interest into viable and deliverable projects,” Ramokgopa said.