Mmamabula

Mmamabula
Location of Mmamabula in Botswana
Country	Botswana
Coordinates	23°36′33″S 26°46′30″E / 23.609295°S 26.774952°E / -23.609295; 26.774952Coordinates: 23°36′33″S 26°46′30″E / 23.609295°S 26.774952°E / -23.609295; 26.774952
Status	Planned
Owner(s)	Jindal Steel and Power
Thermal power station
Primary fuel	Coal
Power generation
Nameplate capacity	300 MW

Mmamabula is a planned coal mine and coal-fired power station to the east of the main road and rail corridor in Botswana between Gaborone and Francistown and south of the Serorome River. The power station would be near to the village of Mmaphashalala. It is about 130 kilometres (81 mi) north of the capital city of Gaborone.

The Mmamabula coalfield is considered to be a western extension of the Waterberg Coalfield in the Ellisras Basin in South Africa, to the east, which contains about 40% of South Africa's coal resources. CIC Energy of Canada owned two prospecting licences in the coal field and conducted extensive exploratory drilling between 2005 and 2012. The portions of the coalfield for which CIC Energy held licences are estimated to have 2.4 billion tonnes of thermal coal of a quality suitable for export, for local power generation and for coal gasification. Deposits were roughly 360 million tonnes in the Central block, 643 million tonnes in the Western block, and 1,392 million tonnes in the Eastern block. The South block, which lies on both sides of the road and rail corridor, is estimated to hold another 311 million tonnes of coal.

The planned Serorome coal mine would be in the Central Block, supplying 4.7 million metric sales tonnes annually for at least thirty years to the planned 1,200 MW Mmamabula power station. Open cast mining would be used for 30% of the area, and underground bord and pillar mining for the remainder. Water from the Dikgatlhong Dam, completed in 2012, was expected to supply the coalfield and power station via the North-South Carrier pipeline. In March 2009, CIC Energy announced that it had signed a contract with Shanghai Electric as contractor for engineering, procurement and construction of the Mmamabula Energy Project (MEP), with commercial operations expected to start four years after financing had been arranged. The same month CIC Energy submitted bids to Eskom of South Africa and Botswana Power Corporation to supply electricity.

South Africa had a target date to gazette their Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) by September 2010. This would lay out South Africa's strategy for meeting new energy needs from 2013 onward, assumed to include new government-owned facilities and contracts with private suppliers such as CIC Energy. South Africa said they could not commit to any Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) with CIC before the IRP was approved. The delay would affect Botswana, which needed a portion of the plant's output to meet projected demand. The IRP was eventually completed in May 2011. It did not include any window for purchase of power from Mmamabula before 2019, and then the amounts purchased would be less than 1200 MW. CIC Energy was forced to put the project on hold after investing over C$100 million.