South Africa’s state power utility’s former chief operating officer and now adviser, Jan Oberholzer will leave Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. at the end of the month.
Oberholzer who retired in April as COO was on a two-year contract to oversee projects at Koeberg and Kusile power plants.
Eskom and Oberholzer agreed to “part ways by mutual agreement,” the utility said in a statement on Monday.
South African Electricity Minister Sees Outages Easing This Week (July 17, 2:41 p.m.)
South Africa’s electricity minister said there will likely be fewer blackouts from this week, after bad planning led to the worst power cuts in a month amid a cold snap.
More than 5,000 megawatts of generating capacity is expected to return to service from Tuesday, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa told reporters in the capital, Pretoria, on Monday. Eskom last week removed 6,000 megawatts from the grid — a process known as Stage 6 loadshedding — as it replaced fuel for open-cycle gas turbines that are used to produce emergency power.
Read More: South African Electricity Minister Sees Outages Easing This Week
Eskom said in a statement on Monday that power cuts will be reduced to stage 1 at 5 a.m. Tuesday from stage 4 currently and ramp up to stage 3 at 4 p.m. until 5 a.m. Wednesday.
South African Platinum Miner Profit Slumps on Metal Prices (July 17, 2:36 p.m.)
Anglo American Platinum Ltd. said first-half profit likely fell as much as 75% due to lower metal prices and after South African power outages cut sales volumes.
The crisis at state-owned power utility Eskom is putting South African miners under pressure, forcing them to curb operations and resort to expensive diesel generators. That’s reducing profitability as production falls and costs increase.
Read More: South African Platinum Miner Profit Slumps on Metal Prices (1)
--With assistance from S'thembile Cele, Rene Vollgraaff and William Clowes.
