The Central Energy Fund has rubbished outgoing Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter’s comments, calling them ‘sinister’.
The CEF has immediately reacted to De Ruyter’s sentiment on Thursday and that it had noted a misleading media report aired on e.TV’s news channel on Tuesday night and repeated on eNCA’s “Check Point”.
CEF also came out defending its organisation’s integrity: “Eskom’s CEO André de Ruyter is on record during an interview with Annika Larsen saying, from what we can hear from the recording while responding to a question:
“Now we are going into the realm of speculation, and again, no evidence. About three months ago there was a visit by the Russian minister of energy to South Africa.”
CEF said it considered it reckless for the CEO who is set to leave the power utility at the end of this month, who alleged that the ruling African National Congress made Eskom its ‘feeding trough’.
De Ruyter has continuously come underfire for his stance on load shedding and some political parties consistently called for his resignation.
He said in the interview, as published by BusinessTech Africa, that there was rampant corruption which was being engineered by top politicians from the governing party, who are interfering in the ailing power utility.
The CEF said: “Instead of focusing on the content of the letter he is referring to that he received from CEF, he elects to indulge in the realm of speculation.
“The intention though from Mr. De Ruyter is a sinister one, which has nothing to do with addressing the debilitating effects of load shedding on the South African economy through ensuring the optimisation of the capacity that sits within the South African state to address this challenge.
“We have been at pains explaining to Mr. De Ruyter that the collaboration of Eskom with an entity of the state such as CEF from a gas-to-power standpoint makes the most economic sense given the Rompco (Republic of Mozambique Pipeline Company) infrastructure position and the possibility of increasing gas flow and the implications thereof on the gas price. And, the implications of this on job retention and creation in the Mpumalanga area is also at the heart of our request for collaboration.”
Furthermore, the energy fund said it had sent a letter to the CEO in December last year underlying the importance of collaborating with Mozambique for gas to power.
“Mr. De Ruyter instead, as he clearly puts it in the interview, chooses to indulge in speculation, and to his credit mentions that there is no evidence to the link he tries to make between our request for collaboration with Eskom and his speculation,” continued the CEF.
“Mr. De Ruyter is deliberately misleading in his response and hides behind the qualification that he makes before he proceeds to choose not to tell the truth regarding CEF’s proposal for collaboration with Eskom on gas to power.
“CEF is also of the view that it does not help to address the base load capacity by replacing base load generation with intermittent generation profile, and our proposal is geared towards ensuring that this risk does not intensify. It is also important to indicate that CEF clearly indicated to Mr. De Ruyter that it is not wise for land to be auctioned off without thinking about optimising synergies within the state in relation to generation.”
The organisation said it was unfortunate that the CEF had been put in a position where it had to respond in public to De Ruyter’s “indulgence in the realm of speculation without evidence”.
The former boss also revealed that syndicates in Mpumalanga were stealing around R1 billion a month from parastatal.