DRC’s Inga III Nixed… Again

After several months of trying to get an answer regarding the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ambitious hydro project, Inga III, news has surfaced that the Inga III has been cancelled. The country is struggling to get smaller projects off the ground much less a project that would cost tens of billions of dollars that could supply power to much of southern Africa.

"If we’re struggling with a 5,000 megawatt project, how are we going to get a 100,000MW project off the ground?" Pat Naidoo, the CEO of the Western Power Corridor (Westcor) venture, asked after learning that his company will be closed.

Westcor, a JV between African utilities from five Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, namely, SNEL (Democratic Republic of Congo), ENE (Angola), Nampower (Namibia), BPC (Botswana), and Eskom (South Africa), announced in August that it will pull out of the Inga III power project and shut down its Botswana office (Westcor Drops Grand Inga III Project).

However, CEO of DRC’s National Electricity Society Yengo Massampu said on February 25 that the Westcor venture would be dissolved. Westcor had planned to spend $5.2 billion to develop the Inga III plant. Did Massampu miss the August announcement and was the DRC still anticipating this cash infusion of $5.2 billion from Westcor? What a shock it must’ve been to realize that it had been pulled.

Following Westcor’s exit, Alternative Energy Africa reported in September that the Westcor chairman reportedly issuing a confidential memo to Westcor directors saying that the DRC was trying to obtain private investors rather than its neighboring Southern African Development Community countries (Inga Scrutinized by Industry Experts). "There were five governments behind this project and the DRC part always kept falling off the pedestal," Naidoo said.

The DRC had apparently been interested in an offer made by Australia’s BHP Billiton, Africa’s biggest aluminum producer with two smelters in South Africa and one in Mozambique. The DRC was in talks with BHP Billiton about using as much as 2,000 MW from a future hydroelectric project for an aluminum smelter in the country’s western Bas Congo province, Illtud Harri, a BHP Billiton spokesman, said on February 25.

"Maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of saying ‘don’t come and disturb me,’" Naidoo said according to Bloomberg.

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