I am surprised South Africa is not investing in exploiting its vast Shale gas fields. I am sure that they do not have the expertise right now, but with help from American shale gas drilling companies, domestic resources could be far cheaper than LNG.
in SA it's more about corruption. Government wants the LNG sector to grease their palms. The feasibility studies at Richardsbay were done years ago, but there has been no political capital to move on that direction.
Agree, issue is that there are a lot of bad policies are discourages investments and encourages corruption, and they have to be worked out of the system one by one. SA is not alone, cronyism is unfortunately an issue across the developing world.
Usually this occurs when a country runs out of money, SAs debt to gdp is relatively high now and the government has woken to part of the reality. The way I look at it is by drawing an analogy to India. The ANC was much like Ghandi's Congress Party. Once they got into power, like typical liberation movements and activists, they didn't know how to run the administration and they were too quick to chase "colonists" out, so the skills transfer was poor.
Why not just stick to coal?
I am surprised South Africa is not investing in exploiting its vast Shale gas fields. I am sure that they do not have the expertise right now, but with help from American shale gas drilling companies, domestic resources could be far cheaper than LNG.
See map down towards bottom of this article:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-greens-should-love-fracking
we have large gas fields, but they are far away from the population center. Private investors are not interested.
My view is to import gas first and then export if it makes business sense, LNG is a buyer's market.
My guess is that the reason why investors are not interested is because of government restrictions. The economics of shale gas are very positive.
in SA it's more about corruption. Government wants the LNG sector to grease their palms. The feasibility studies at Richardsbay were done years ago, but there has been no political capital to move on that direction.
Very sad. South Africa has so much unrealized potential.
Agree, issue is that there are a lot of bad policies are discourages investments and encourages corruption, and they have to be worked out of the system one by one. SA is not alone, cronyism is unfortunately an issue across the developing world.
Usually this occurs when a country runs out of money, SAs debt to gdp is relatively high now and the government has woken to part of the reality. The way I look at it is by drawing an analogy to India. The ANC was much like Ghandi's Congress Party. Once they got into power, like typical liberation movements and activists, they didn't know how to run the administration and they were too quick to chase "colonists" out, so the skills transfer was poor.