JOHANNESBURG, May 14 (Reuters) – It is five o’clock in the evening in South Africa and the computer dials at the nerve-centre of state electricity firm Eskom are cranking towards the red as millions of people get home and turn on their heating, hot water and cookers.

In the next two hours, demand will jump sharply, pushing the grid towards its limits and a repeat of the emergency rolling blackouts, known as ‘load-shedding’, that wreaked havoc on Africa’s biggest economy in 2008.

With the southern hemisphere winter drawing in, Eskom is walking a tightrope to keep power flowing to factories, mines and smelters that had to shut down for days four years ago, costing the economy billions of dollars in lost output.

At one point in January, the difference between demand and available supply fell to just 460 MW – a buffer of just over 1 percent – as some plants running harder than usual because of network maintenance unexpectedly tripped out.

More close shaves like that and Eskom will have little option but to start shutting down parts of the system to prevent a total collapse – a move that would lead to temporary mine closures and a spike in world prices of platinum, gold and coal.

South Africa’s currency, the rand, would also take a hit, as would the confidence of foreign investors.

The pressure is huge, yet it is hard to see any signs of it among the technicians monitoring the banks of blinking screens and flashing alarms in Eskom’s darkened control centre.

PRETORIA, May 11 (Reuters) – A South African court on Friday granted the mining ministry and politically connected Imperial Crown Trading (ICT) the leave to appeal in a mineral rights case against Kumba Iron Ore and ArcelorMittal South Africa .

The decision could drag out a complicated case for partial rights at one of the world’s largest iron ore mines. Critics have said they were given to ICT – a company with no mining experience but with business links to President Jacob Zuma’s son - in a sweetheart deal.

Police are investigating possible fraud.

Judge Raymond Zondo ruled in December that ICT could not keep mineral prospecting rights it was awarded by the ministry..

On Friday, he allowed for the right to appeal his decision.

Disputes over mineral rights in resource-rich South Africa have raised investor concerns over transparency and governance in Africa’s biggest economy after some had been awarded to people linked to high-ranking officials, sometimes over areas already being mined.

South Africa previously awarded ICT the right to prospect for minerals at the Sishen mine operated by Kumba, a unit of global miner Anglo American, in an area over which ArcelorMittal South Africa previously held a mining right.

KHOMANANI MINE, South Africa, May 9 (Reuters) – Anglo American Platinum, the world’s top producer of the precious metal, on Wednesday launched what is said is the first fuel cell-powered mining locomotive, showing the technology’s potential as a clean energy source.

The prototype – quiet, blue in colour and with the sharp angles of a Lego toy – is one of five fuel cell locomotives that will be tested for underground use at one of Amplats’ mines.

Amplats’ interest in fuel cells lies in their potential to boost demand for platinum, used as a catalyst in the cells. Some 1.5 ounces (42 grams) of the precious metal were used in the prototype locomotive, one of the partners in the project said.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and heat.

“Hydrogen fuel cell locomotives are more economical and environmentally friendly than other forms of rail transport,” Cynthia Caroll, the chief executive of Anglo American, said at the launch. Anglo owns 80 percent of its platinum unit.

“They are more energy efficient … don’t require electricity from the grid and will not emit any noxious gases.”

Fuel cells are seen as a suitable technology for Africa where millions of people still have no access to electricity and where governments are seeking to cut their reliance on coal-fired power plants that produce greenhouse gases.

JOHANNESBURG, May 3 (Reuters) – South African papermaker Mondi on Thursday posted a drop in first-quarter underlying operating profit due to lower prices and volumes, but said demand for its products was picking up.

Mondi, also listed in London, said first-quarter underlying operating profit fell to 120 million euros ($157.82 million), compared with 179 million in the same period last year.

“During the first quarter we have seen the price momentum starting to build,” said Chief Executive David Hathorn, adding volumes and prices seemed to have bottomed out.

“All plants are up and running, so the second quarter should have better volumes than the first quarter, and from a pricing point of view we have a positive price momentum with a variety of price increases going through,” he said.

For 2012, costs were not expected to rise dramatically above inflation, except for pulp and waste paper prices which have risen sharply, Hathorn said.

The global paper industry has slowly been recovering from a slump triggered by weak demand and over capacity.

Mondi, with operations across 28 countries, has been targeting fast-growing markets in eastern Europe and is seen as a safer bet than some of its western European rivals, which battle with high-cost assets.

JOHANNESBURG, April 30 (Reuters) – South African crude oil imports from Iran rose to 3.37 billion rand ($434.8 million) in March from 2.8 billion the previous month, customs data showed on Monday, indicating Pretoria had not bowed to U.S. pressure to curb commercial links with Tehran.

The Revenue Service said Africa’s biggest economy imported 505,908 tonnes of Iranian crude in March, up from 417,188 tonnes the previous month.

South Africa has come under Western pressure to cut Iranian crude imports as part of sanctions designed to halt Tehran’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, but the response from diplomatically non-aligned Pretoria has been unclear.

South Africa could take an economic hit if it does not comply. Its Iranian crude imports declined between October and January, when they reached zero, but they began rising again in February.

Neither the foreign ministry nor the department of energy were willing to comment.

It is also not clear who bought the crude after almost all South African refiners said in recent months that they had already found alternative suppliers.

Senior energy and foreign ministry officials contradicted each other in March as to the status of Iranian imports. Until late last year, Iran was typically South Africa’s biggest crude supplier, accounting for a quarter of its oil imports.

MAPUTO, April 23 (Reuters) – Mozambique will buy 6 million gigajoules of gas from South African petrochemicals group Sasol to bring cleaner energy to the country, the head of state-owned Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH) said on Monday.

Nelson Ocuane said ENH will need to build a 30-kilometre (19-mile) pipeline from Matola, where Sasol’s current pipeline passes on the way to South Africa, to the capital Maputo and further north to the Maracuene district.

The cost of the pipeline, expected to be completed by September next year, is estimated at $40 million.

“After three years of talks we have finally managed to agree a good price for the gas to make this project sustainable,” he said at a signing ceremony in Maputo.

Ocuane said the government would also subsidise the gas to supply its resident at prices 40 percent cheaper than currently available.

It will initially be supplied to industry and services such as hospitals and to residents from 2014.

Until now almost all of the gas produced from the Sasol-operated Pande/Temane onshore field in southern Mozambique has fed Sasol’s synthetic fuels and chemicals operations in South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, March 27 (Reuters) – South Africa imported no oil from Iran in January, according to government trade and customs data, suggesting Africa’s biggest economy has heeded a call from the United States to halt oil shipments from Tehran as part of Western sanctions.

Trade figures showed marked increases in January imports from Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, indicating they have replaced Iran, usually South Africa’s biggest supplier of crude accounting for a quarter of its oil imports.

Pretoria has come under Western pressure to cut Iranian crude imports as part of sanctions designed to halt Tehran’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, although it has been unclear how the diplomatically non-aligned Africa nation would respond.

U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman visited South Africa on Jan. 17 to push home the message from Washington.

Figures on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) website showed South Africa imported just 6.2 million rand ($806,200) of goods from Iran in January, compared with a monthly average of more than 2.2 billion rand $290 million during last year.

The January 2012 figure is less than 1 percent of that for January 2011. Separately, customs figures from the South African Revenue Service showed zero oil imports from the Islamic republic for the first month of this year.

Qatari imports soared to 1.76 billion rand in January, from a monthly average of 0.3 billion throughout 2011, while Saudi imports rose to 3 billion rand from a monthly average of 2.7 billion last year.

JOHANNESBURG, March 12 (Reuters) – South African petrochemicals group Sasol Ltd sees opportunities to buy cheap natural gas assets in North America that would help boost its output of chemicals and synthetic fuels, a senior official said on Monday.

Sasol, the world’s top maker of motor fuel from coal, is investing heavily in growth, especially by expanding its shale gas portfolio, with capital expenditure seen at 29 billion rand ($3.9 billion) this financial year rising to 32 billion in 2012/13.

“It is a very attractive time to buy gas resources. The opportunity has never been as good as now to do such an acquisition,” Lean Strauss, a Sasol group manager, told Reuters.

“We are focusing on North America. That is where the gas is the cheapest by far in the world right now.”

Sasol is conducting feasibility studies to build three 48,000 barrels-per-day gas-to-liquid (GTL) plants, one in Canada and two in the United States.

The company recently bought stakes in two shale gas assets in Canada, which together should supply about 60 percent of the gas it needs to power the three plants over a 25-year period, and will be looking for other assets to secure the remainder.

Sasol has slowed the development of the two Canadian assets given low gas prices, but said they would be ready by the time the GTL plants were up and running, which if approved was expected around 2017.

JOHANNESBURG, March 9 (Reuters) – South Africa’s energy regulator said on Friday it had cut the increase in electricity rates for power utility Eskom to 16 percent for the 2012/13 financial year from a previously approved hike of 25.9 percent.

The decision follows Eskom’s application to reduce the hike after the utility had been asked by the government to ease up on private and industrial consumers, who have been hit in recent years with soaring power costs.

Energy-intensive users, including South Africa’s vital mining industry, have long said that the steep increases were making some of their operations unsustainable.

Cash-strapped Eskom has been struggling to raise the money it needs to build power plants fast to avoid a repeat of a crisis that forced mines to shut for days in 2008 and cost Africa’s biggest economy billions of dollars in lost output.

The reduction will result in a loss of revenue of 11.15 billion rand ($1.48 billion), the regulator said.

Eskom, once one of the world’s lowest-cost electricity producers, was granted in 2010 three years of 25 percent annual rises in power tariffs and was expected to apply for two more similar increases after that.

Only from 2016 were tariffs expected to rise in line with inflation, but President Jacob Zuma said in February he had asked Eskom to seek options to limit the increases in rates to ensure they would not stem economic growth.

JOHANNESBURG, March 8 (Reuters) – South Africa will come to the rescue of a nuclear industry, still struggling for customers a year after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, with a tender for one of the world’s biggest atomic power deals.

Firms from France, the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia have been lining up for years for a chance to win the contract worth between 400 billion rand ($52.3 billion) and a trillion rand($130.8 billion).

Chances to build reactors have grown fewer after the Fukushima accident, with many developed states trying to wean themselves off nuclear.

“It has become close to a buyers market and not a sellers market, which it was before Fukushima,” said H. Holger Rogner, section head of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s planning and economic studies section.

South African officials expect to open the bidding in the next few months for 9,600 megawatts of nuclear power – or about the normal output of six reactors. Africa’s largest economy is operating on razor thin electricity margins and needs the power to grow its energy-intensive mining sector and manufacturing.

Potential bidders are likely to include Areva, EDF, Toshiba’s Westinghouse Electric Corp, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) and Russia’s Rosatom.

In a budget proposal released last month, South Africa penciled in 300 billion rand for the nuclear build, but the figure was just the start, energy minister Dipuo Peters said.