Displaying items by tag: Power

Democratic Republic of Congo: According to Agence France Presse, a lack of electricity is hindering the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining and slag sectors.

In Katanga's regional capital Lubumbashi, power cuts regularly shut down the furnace at the STL plant that extracts cobalt, copper and zinc oxide from a nearby mountain of slag. It takes 34MW of electricity for the site's furnace to operate at full capacity, but the DR Congo's national power company Snel is only supplying 24MW. "We are living in a situation of continual stress and it's hell," said Jean-Pol Tavernier, STL's maintenance director. Worse still, according to Tavernier, are the outages that disrupt production, sometimes several times a day, for up to seven hours. "Electricity began to become a problem during the mining boom of 2006 - 2007," said Tavernier. "It kept getting worse until becoming really catastrophic in 2012."

The lack of power has forced Chinese company CDM to cut 300 jobs. "We can't work with the little power we have," said CDM's director in Katanga, Akili Peter. "This is what forced us to shut down the four furnaces and lay off all those people working with us."

The Democratic Republic of Congo's mining sector had been enjoying a renaissance amid an influx of foreign investors and high commodity prices since it adopted a new mining code in 2002. However, the country's mining sector lacks about 600MW of electricity according to Ben Munanga, director of energy and infrastructure at the Kazakh group ENRC, who deals with mining energy issues on the country's Chamber of Business. The problem is that the age and poor maintenance of the power stations do not allow state-owned Snel to meet electricity demands. In 2013 it generated about 1500MW of electricity despite an installed capacity of nearly 2450MW.

The head of the Snel's grid in Katanga, Jean Marie Mutombo Ngoie, said that the supply problem was just temporary. "We think that within a year we'll be able to increase power," said Mutombo Ngoie, citing renovations of the power stations that serve mining companies as a reason for his optimism. "However, that won't absorb the entire deficit. We need new production, that is the pressing need."

Some mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo are installing generators to alleviate their power problems, while others import electricity from Zambia, both expensive options. In partial response, the government issued a decree in April 2015 exonerating mining companies for four years from customs duties and sales tax on imported electricity and foreign equipment purchased to generate power.