South Africa should not underestimate the sizeable potential in the gas sector or the potential benefit of closer alignment with Mozambique, according to Andrew Herscowitz of Power Africa, a United States agency for international development. Speaking at an energy conference in Cape Town recently, Herscowitz said there could be no conversation in South Africa around gas without including Mozambique. “They have the resource and South Africa the market,” he said. “The import of gas in high quantities from Mozambique would bring huge opportunity from the north of that country to South Africa. The construction of a pipeline alone would create thousands of jobs.” South Africa currently imports around 200 million gigajoules of gas from Mozambique via an 865km pipeline. Imported by Sasol, some of this gas is used in its own production processes while the rest is distributed to its local customer base.
