Transnet has announced an ambitious project to secure South Africa’s future gas supply with plans to have gas flowing into the country by 2028.

The initiative, revealed at Africa Oil Week in Cape Town this week (October 8-10), involves repurposing Transnet’s existing pipeline infrastructure to transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the coast to key inland markets.

The plan aims to address South Africa’s looming “gas cliff”. The country’s supplies from the Pande-Temane gas fields in Mozambique are set to end as the fields reach end of life.

The project will repurpose the Lilly Pipeline to transport LNG from the Richards Bay port to Secunda and Durban. It is currently optimised to transport methane-rich gas (MRG) from the Sasol plant in Secunda to Richards Bay. The proposed plan will reverse the flow to transport LNG to Secunda, meeting the energy needs of several current gas offtakers. “Transnet Pipeline is following a range of strategies to ensure security of energy supply to the inland market,” said Transnet Pipelines CEO Sibongiseni Khathi.

The Lilly Pipeline transports approximately 500 million cubic metres of MRG annually from Secunda via Empangeni to Durban with key offtake points along the route. MRG is primarily used to power heavy industries such as aluminium smelters, tiling, mining, brick-making, paper production and steel manufacturing.

The new project entails constructing an intake station near Empangeni to connect with the new Zululand Energy Terminal as the source point for the Port of Richards Bay and splitting the flow at Empangeni to allow bidirectional flow towards Durban and Secunda.

It also includes debottlenecking and modelling ensuring maximum future capacity to meet market demand and secure commercial agreements, Khati said. “There is a drive from every corner to try to get new gas supplies online as quickly as possible. The schedule is for phase 1 of the terminal to be completed by the first quarter of 2028 but work is being done to try to bring that forward to early 2027.”

For the Richards Bay terminal to be viable, it also needs to incorporate a gas-to-power solution, Khati added. In phase 2 of the project, the terminal will expand from capacity of about two million tons per annum to around five million tons. “We are extremely excited about this project, which will bring gas into the South African market at scale,” said Khathi. “If everything goes to plan, we could see gas flowing into the country by 2028.”