Homes may piggyback on MTN private line

HOUSEHOLDS in some Johannesburg suburbs will be able to connect to a new R65-million gas pipeline that Egoli Gas is building to serve an MTN power station in Fairland.

The 8km pipeline, which will stretch from Robertville, where Sasol’s pressure-reducing station is located, to Constantia Kloof, will be finished by December, according to managing director Shepherd Shonhiwa.

Suburbs within a kilometre radius of the pipeline, including Florida, will be able to connect to the line.

MTN is already using gas, imported by Sasol from its gas fields in Mozambique, to generate about 2MW at its Fairland campus. The new line will allow it to increase its capacity to 10MW.

Standard Bank and Nedbank were also considering projects at Lakeview in Constantia Kloof, said Shonhiwa.

“The business case for the pipeline is based on the demand by large consumers at Lakeview such as MTN and not households, which consume comparatively small amounts of gas.

“Egoli Gas can put a small pipeline along the street if there are a sizable number of households who sign up to take gas,” said Shonhiwa.

The piping from the boundary of each property into the house will have to be done by the owner, who must use accredited gas installers. Egoli Gas, which was sold by the City of Johannesburg to black-owned energy group Reatile Energy last year, serves about 6 500 households in the greater Johannesburg area.

It supplies about 3.5 million gigajoules of gas a year to consumers in Johannesburg through its 1 200km network and plans to expand this to seven million gigajoules in the coming years. —