Westcor was established in 2003 by five members of the Southern African Power Pool, namely SNEL (Democratic Republic of Congo), ENE (Angola), Nampower (Namibia), Botswana Power Corporation (Botswana) and Eskom (South Africa).
The so-called Westcor Project would involve the development of hydro-electric power stations in the DRC, Angola and Namibia, and the bulk transmission of the power onto the national grids of the five participating countries, and onto the Southern African Power Pool regional grid.
The existing 350 MW Inga 1 hydro-power station on the Congo River is currently completely dysfunctional, while the 1400 MW Inga 2 power station is only partly operational. According to Dr. Naidoo, both could easily be refurbished and brought to full capacity by the DRC with the assistance of Westcor, to provide 5000 MW to meet local (DRC) power demand.
Like Inga 1 and 2, the proposed new Inga 3 power station would comprise large-scale run-of-river hydro-engineering technology, utilising 24 small, modular generators of about 220 MW each to give some 5000 MW, rather than a conventional storage dam with large turbines operating at high head. The Inga 3 project would then utilise extra-long distance HV DC technology for bulk power transmission, and conventional HV AC for local power distribution for the development of the SADC western power transmission grid.
Later, the project would be rolled out step-by-step, matching supply with demand, to include Inga 4, taking run-of- river generation up to 15 000 MW at the continuous minimum flow rate of 30 000 m3 per second. Thereafter, with the construction of a dam, Grand Inga would bring this to a total of some 50 000 MW from the Inga site.
At the outset, the project was classed as high risk, and a phased development approach was undertaken by the shareholders. But according to Dr. Naidoo: “All the risk in technology, engineering, power generation, power transmission, power delivery, financing, environmental, the business case, tariffs and regulatory – all were cleared”.
But now the hurdle of political risk has emerged, as Dr. Naidoo indicated that: “Mid-flight – we are in mid-flight now – and our partner, the DRC government, is starting to change the mandate on Inga 3. They are basically taking the foundation from under our feet”.
He continued: “The DRC government said to us they would like to take on the development of Inga 3 on their own, to cater for the supplies principally to the BHP Billiton smelters. So they [the DRC] would develop the power station themselves, which is highly unlikely of course. We have written to BHP Billiton, we have written to everybody, but clarity has never come – the tragedy is that we have not received anything official”.
Dr. Naidoo indicated that Minister Sonjica had summoned Dr. Xolani Mkhwanazi, the current chairman of BHP Billiton South Africa, to her office in Pretoria, and asked: “Why, why have you done this to us?” And he said that Dr. Mkhwanazi had been “basically speechless”.
Dr. Naidoo further advised that the relevant officials and minister from the DRC have failed to pitch up at recent Westcor meetings in Luanda and Maputo. Then as recently as Thursday 30 July 2009, Westcor held a shareholders’ meeting to consider the matter and chart a way forward, and again the DRC did not attend.
The situation looks like it is going to get messy, with Dr. Naidoo saying: “We will need to recover the losses as we are dealing with public money, and the losses could also involve future potential earnings. It’s very complex, very sad, but very complex… It’s very difficult – this is deep politics now. That is when I said to my chairman: ‘Chairman, this is it – we are at the wrong venue’ .”
Dr. Naidoo also said that there were issues of governance here: “Every meeting, they [the West] tell us: ‘Africa, get your house in order. Africa, sort yourselves out’. But our evidence shows that ‘reputable’ companies become the very persons that continuously disturb Africa’s prosperity, and therefore the burden of poverty continues.”
Further criticising the way BHP Billiton operates, Dr. Naidoo added: “What I have realised is that the Billiton under Gilbertson that we worked with is very different now. There is all new leadership out there, working out of Australia, and you hardly see any one of them. I talk to my colleagues at Billiton all the time, I keep talking to them, hoping that some time sanity will prevail.”
In response to this article, BHP Billiton confirmed that it had concluded a preliminary study for an aluminium smelter project in the DRC in 2007, and that the future of this project hinged on progress being made on the Inga 3 hydro-power project, a development which it says it is working working on in cooperation with the DRC government.
If it goes ahead, BHP Billiton estimates that the smelter would consume less than half of the power from Inga 3 (if and when fully expanded), and that the remaining power would be available for both local and regional purposes. However, BHP Billiton would not comment further on the specifics of this article, or on its interactions with governments relating to the Westcor Project.
On the political situation in the DRC and the region, Dr. Naidoo elaborated: “I have heard President Kabila (when he was here on a bilateral state visit) speak on the Westcor Project and Inga 3, and say that they are expecting early project delivery. But when we were in Kinshasa three weeks ago while working with the ministry officials, it came home when one said to me: ‘Who is Kabila? He belongs to you – SADC – you are propping him up here’.
So it’s now SADC positioning him and holding him in power, and it’s their belief that we need to let go. It’s virtually an anti-SADC type position that is developing in the region."
So now this sorry matter appears to be in the hands of government, with Dr. Naidoo saying that he had received a mandate to prepare all the paperwork that needs to go to the five governments [DRC, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa], to the heads of state, to SADC and the rest of the political infrastructure.
And while Dr. Naidoo is still putting on a brave face, it seems clear that in considerations over the mineral and energy wealth of the DRC, global resource business and national politics have conspired to sink this Pan-African dream.
