SA may cop out of Kusile

Johannesburg - South Africa may propose to cancel the building of the Kusile coal-fired power plant planned by power utility Eskom , a senior ministry official said on Wednesday.

Ompi Aphane, deputy director general at the department of energy, said the cancellation of Kusile, whose first unit was initially expected to come on stream by 2014 to fill a power shortage in Africa's biggest economy, was one of the possible scenarios for the country's new national electricity plan.

"The cancellation of Kusile is one of the scenarios," he told the Action for Energy conference in Johannesburg.

He said the new plan would be announced by the third quarter of this year.