Financial close for emergency power bids extended

South Africa has extended by two months a deadline for companies to reach financial close for projects aimed at adding emergency generation capacity to end load shedding, according to people familiar with the situation.

While financial close was due Monday, environmental challenges and a lawsuit filed by a losing bidder stymied plans by companies to get their plans endorsed by banks. Companies will now have until the end of March, the people said, asking not to be identified before a public announcement.

The department of mineral resources & energy declined to comment immediately. The news was earlier reported by Rapport newspaper.

The Risk Mitigation Independent Power Procurement Programme, designed to add generation capacity as quickly as possible to curtail outages, awarded deals to supply almost 2GW of electricity to preferred bidders in March last year.

Karpowership, a Turkish supplier of ship-mounted gas-power plants, won the bulk of the tender. The rest were dominated by solar power and included groups in which Scatec, Électricité de France and TotalEnergies hold stakes. The legal challenge was dismissed on Sunday.  — (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP