Harmony says not all to get more power

By Eric Onstad

LONDON (Reuters) - South Africa's Harmony Gold (HARJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world's fifth-biggest gold producer, disputed reports on Monday that South Africa's mining sector would get a blanket increase in power to 95 percent and said that only certain firms would get more electricity.

"The 95 percent is definitely incorrect," Chief Executive Graham Briggs told the Reuters Global Mining Summit in London.

"Each mining company applied for a certain amount of megawatts to satisfy their requirements to stop putting jobs on the line that could be addressed quite quickly with a slight increase in power," he said by telephone from Johannesburg.

"My personal opinion is that the power issue remains a crisis and that the short to medium term, probably going up to four years, there's still going to be a very tight supply issue."

The South African government said last week it would let mines raise power use to 95 percent from 90 percent and the plan will be phased in over the next two weeks to avoid worsening an electricity crisis.

Mines in one of the world's top producers of gold have been operating below full power since outages forced five days of shutdowns in late January, driving up precious metals prices and raising fears of possible job losses and slowing growth.

Briggs said the power situation remained "finely tuned" and that Harmony did not request additional power in the short-term because it has been closing some mining areas as part of a restructuring plan to boost profitability.

"There may be load shedding and the like going forward if every company were to do what has been done to squeeze an extra amount out of the system."  Continued...