Eleven years, zero megawatts: South Africa's first gas-to-power tender ends with no winner
Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced on 28 October 2026 that no preferred bidder was appointed under the first bid window of the gas-to-power programme, after four bids totalling 2,830 megawatts all failed on gas-supply assurances.
Published 28 October 2026 · 19:16 GMT
The summary
Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced on 28 October 2026 that no preferred bidder was appointed under the first bid window of the gas-to-power programme, after four bids totalling 2,830 megawatts all failed on gas-supply assurances. On 28 October 2026, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced that no preferred bidders were appointed and no generation capacity was awarded under GASIPPPP Bid Window 1. The bid window sought 2,000 MW of gas-fired generation; four bids offering a combined 2,830 MW were received on 29 May 2026 under a revised request for proposals issued on 20 October 2025.
The three lenses
- WestWest; From the wire reporting of Reuters and Bloomberg, this is a transition story told in market terms: a first tender fails, a coal-heavy system loses its flexible replacement, and industrial users quantify the exposure in jobs and rand.
- EastEast; From the vantage of the Asian LNG market, which would supply the cargoes a South African terminal would one day receive, the failure reads as a demand-side warning.
- Global SouthSouth; From Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg, the story is told as a domestic accountability tale: eleven years, three programmes, zero delivered megawatts, and a minister who insists the country is not retreating.
Key facts
- On 28 October 2026, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced that no preferred bidders were appointed and no generation capacity was awarded under GASIPPPP Bid Window 1. South African Government (Oct 28, 2026)
- The bid window sought 2,000 MW of gas-fired generation; four bids offering a combined 2,830 MW were received on 29 May 2026 under a revised request for proposals issued on 20 October 2025. South African Government (Oct 28, 2026)
- The four bidders were Khanyazwe Flexpower (440 MW, Mpumalanga), Pictor GTP Consortium (990 MW, KwaZulu-Natal), Kelvin Redevelopment (600 MW, Gauteng) and Komatipoort Power (800 MW, Mpumalanga). Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- The department said the bidders could not provide gas-supply assurances to the level required in the request for proposals, and that this was one of the main reasons none satisfied the mandatory functional criteria. South African Government (Oct 28, 2026)
- South Africa imports most of its natural gas from Mozambique and has no liquefied natural gas receiving terminal, the department said. South African Government (Oct 28, 2026)
- The Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa called the failure a disaster, saying about 75,000 direct jobs and R700 billion in annual economic activity are on the line as gas clients scramble for alternative supplies ahead of deadlines in 2028 and 2030. Business Day (Oct 28, 2026)
What did the minister actually announce on 28 October?
Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced the conclusion of the first bid window of the Gas Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, known as GASIPPPP, with a stark result: no preferred bidders were appointed and no generation capacity was awarded. The programme had sought 2,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation, in line with the country's 2019 and 2025 Integrated Resource Plans. Four bids were received when the window closed on 29 May 2026, offering a combined 2,830 megawatts; more than the target. Interest was not the problem. The bids failed, the department said, because none of the bidders could provide gas-supply assurances to the level the request for proposals required, and that failure was one of the main reasons none satisfied the mandatory functional criteria.
The announcement matters because gas is supposed to be the flexible backbone of South Africa's move away from coal. Coal still generates roughly 80 percent of the country's electricity, and the 2025 plan envisages shutting 8 gigawatts of coal capacity by 2030, replaced in part by 6 gigawatts of gas-powered generation that is already behind schedule. A tender that awards nothing does not merely delay one project; it leaves that whole sequence without its first delivered piece.
What do the four bids and the official record show?
The official record is unusually complete, because the department published both the arithmetic and the reason. A revised request for proposals was issued on 20 October 2025 after extensive consultation with the market. When bids closed on 29 May 2026, four proposals had arrived: Khanyazwe Flexpower, 440 megawatts in Mpumalanga; Pictor GTP Consortium, 990 megawatts in KwaZulu-Natal; Kelvin Redevelopment, 600 megawatts in Gauteng; and Komatipoort Power, 800 megawatts in Mpumalanga. Together they offered 2,830 megawatts against a 2,000-megawatt target. The evaluation, the department said, turned on a single mandatory hurdle: bidders had to demonstrate assured gas supply, and none could do so to the required level.
The reason is structural, not procedural. South Africa imports most of its natural gas from Mozambique, where volumes are declining and supplies are expected to run dry within a few years, and the country has no liquefied natural gas receiving terminal. A developer asked to guarantee fuel for twenty years is therefore being asked to guarantee something the country's infrastructure cannot yet deliver. The department acknowledged the point itself, noting that South Africa is potentially well endowed with natural gas while still importing most of what it uses. The gap between potential and pipeline is the story of this tender.
What remains unanswered after an empty tender?
The largest unknown is what comes next in any concrete sense. The minister's statement refers to a possible revised process, provisionally described as GASIPPPP Bid Window 1.5, and promises further information through official channels before the end of the calendar year. But no structure, no revised requirements and no timetable have been announced, and any subsequent process remains subject to statutory, governance and procurement approvals. A label is not a plan, and the market will judge the next round by its documents, not its name.
Two further unknowns sit behind the headline. The first is the fate of the separate 1,000-megawatt window envisaged for the Coega industrial development zone, which has yet to reach formal competitive procurement. The second is timing: the country's first LNG import terminal is in development, with ExxonMobil and Eskom as anchor clients, but there is no indication in the announcement of when it will be operational, or whether a redesigned tender can credibly require fuel assurances before that terminal exists. Until those dates are public, nobody can say whether Bid Window 1.5 will solve the circular problem or repeat it.
Why does an unawarded tender threaten more than the lights?
Gas in South Africa is not only about electricity. It is about factories. The Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa called the outcome a disaster, and put numbers to the warning: gas clients are scrambling to secure alternative supplies before deadlines in 2028 and 2030, with about 75,000 direct jobs and R700 billion in annual economic activity on the line. Its executive officer, Jaco Human, said the failure must now trigger urgent intervention at presidential level. That reaction explains why a procurement result made the front of the business pages: for industrial users, the tender was not an energy abstraction but the last plausible bridge between declining Mozambican pipeline gas and a future LNG terminal.
It also matters for the energy transition itself. Gas-fired plants are meant to provide the flexible, dispatchable capacity that complements variable wind and solar power, keeping the system stable as coal retires. Without them, the country faces an uncomfortable choice it has not resolved: keep coal running longer than planned, lean harder on battery storage that is itself still being procured at scale, or accept tighter supply margins. Nigeria's gas gamble shows the same fuel-first dilemma playing out elsewhere on the continent, where pipelines and terminals must precede power plants rather than follow them.
How did eleven years of procurement produce zero megawatts?
The history, set out in detail by energy analyst Chris Yelland in the Daily Maverick, reads as three attempts at the same problem, each defeated by the same missing piece. The first began in May 2015, when the then Department of Energy issued a request for information for about 3,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation, followed in October 2016 by a preliminary information memorandum envisaging about 2,000 megawatts at Richards Bay and 1,000 at Coega. That programme understood the central point: gas-fired stations could provide the anchor demand to justify LNG import terminals, floating storage and regasification units, and pipelines. It never progressed to a formal request for proposals. No preferred bidders were appointed, no power purchase agreements were signed, and no capacity was delivered.
The second attempt came through the emergency Risk Mitigation programme launched in August 2020. In March 2021, eight preferred bidders were announced, including three Karpowership projects proposing floating gas-fired stations; 450 megawatts at Richards Bay, 450 at Coega and 320 at Saldanha Bay, a combined 1,220 megawatts, within about 1,418 megawatts of gas-fired capacity in total. Environmental authorisations, port infrastructure, regulatory approvals and commercial arrangements all proved intractable, deadlines were extended repeatedly, and on 31 December 2023 the final extended deadline expired, with Eskom confirming that grid access budget quotes would not be extended further. The third attempt, GASIPPPP itself, began with a request for proposals on 14 December 2023 and ended, almost three years later, in the same place as the first: no award. The pattern is not bad luck. It is a procurement model that demands bankable fuel before the fuel infrastructure exists, and fuel infrastructure that cannot be financed without bankable demand.
What does this failure set in motion beyond the tender?
The first consequence falls on industrial strategy. If the 2028 and 2030 deadlines arrive without alternative gas supplies, manufacturers that depend on pipeline gas face shutdowns, relocations or conversions whose costs will land on jobs long before they land on headlines. The gas users' demand for presidential-level intervention is a signal that the issue has outgrown the energy department: it now touches industrial policy, trade competitiveness and the credibility of South Africa's investment pitch, which rests heavily on reliable energy. South Africa's power constraints are already shaping where energy-hungry investment goes, and a failed gas round sharpens that calculation.
The second consequence is institutional. Yelland's account lists the bodies whose mandates now collide: the electricity and energy department, the mineral and petroleum resources department, the environment department, the Treasury, the IPP Office, Transnet, the Central Energy Fund, Eskom and the national transmission company. A redesigned programme must allocate risks, gas availability, LNG prices, exchange rates, minimum offtake, infrastructure utilisation, across those institutions without loading unacceptable costs onto consumers, taxpayers or the state. That is a coordination problem, not a documents problem, and it is why the minister's promise of structured engagement will be watched more closely than the label Bid Window 1.5. Meanwhile, Europe's own winter gas warning is a reminder that LNG is a contested global market, not a tap South Africa can turn on at will.
What should readers watch before the end of 2026?
Three dates and documents will tell whether this failure becomes a turning point. The first is the department's promised communication before the end of the calendar year: its contents, structure, fuel requirements, timetable, will show whether Bid Window 1.5 genuinely redesigns the risk allocation or merely reissues the same requirements with a new number. The second is any movement on the Coega 1,000-megawatt window, which would test whether a zone-based approach can succeed where a national one has not. The third is progress on the LNG import terminal itself, since no tender design can substitute for a terminal that does not yet exist.
Readers should also watch the industrial clock. The gas users' 2028 and 2030 deadlines are not procurement deadlines; they are the dates by which factories must have fuel or face closure. If the year ends with a redesigned tender but no terminal timeline and no interim fuel plan, the story will not be that South Africa learned from failure. It will be that it documented it, carefully, for a fourth time.
The three lenses
West Lens:
West, From the wire reporting of Reuters and Bloomberg, this is a transition story told in market terms: a first tender fails, a coal-heavy system loses its flexible replacement, and industrial users quantify the exposure in jobs and rand. The emphasis falls on what investors need, bankable fuel, a terminal, a timetable; and on the absence of all three.
East Lens:
East; From the vantage of the Asian LNG market, which would supply the cargoes a South African terminal would one day receive, the failure reads as a demand-side warning. A buyer that cannot underwrite long-term offtake cannot anchor the infrastructure it needs, and suppliers will commit cargoes elsewhere first. The lesson travels in both directions: terminals need customers as surely as power stations need terminals.
South Lens:
South, From Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg, the story is told as a domestic accountability tale: eleven years, three programmes, zero delivered megawatts, and a minister who insists the country is not retreating. The South African telling keeps the human stakes in the foreground, the factories, the jobs, the 2028 cliff; and asks whether the state can coordinate itself before the market gives up waiting.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: South Africa's first dedicated gas-to-power tender has ended with nothing awarded, no preferred bidder, no megawatt, after four bids totalling 2,830 MW failed to meet the mandatory requirement to assure long-term gas supply, in a country that imports most of its gas from Mozambique and has no LNG receiving terminal.
- What we don't agree on
- What we disagree on: whether this is a useful failure or a wasted decade. The government reads it as a first-of-its-kind process that clarifies what a workable round must fix. Critics, including the industrial gas users, read it as a disaster that leaves factories facing a fuel cliff in 2028 and 2030 without a single new gas-fired plant to show for eleven years of procurement.
- What we know
- What we know: the dates and the arithmetic; a 2,000 MW target under the 2019 and 2025 Integrated Resource Plans, a revised request for proposals on 20 October 2025, four bids received on 29 May 2026, and the minister's announcement on 28 October 2026 that none satisfied the mandatory functional criteria, principally on gas-supply assurances.
- What we don't know yet
- What we do not know yet: what a revised round will actually look like; the structure, requirements and timetable of the provisionally described Bid Window 1.5 are unannounced, as is the fate of the separate 1,000 MW Coega window, and whether the LNG import terminal now in development will arrive in time to underwrite any of it.
- What we expect
- What we expect: structured engagement with bidders, lenders and terminal developers before the end of 2026, a redesigned round that tackles fuel supply and infrastructure together rather than demanding one before the other exists, and continued pressure from industrial gas users for intervention at presidential level if no credible path appears.
Questions, answered
What happened in South Africa's gas-to-power tender?
The first bid window of the Gas Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme ended on 28 October 2026 with no preferred bidder appointed and no generation capacity awarded. Four bids offering 2,830 megawatts were received, but none satisfied the mandatory requirement to assure long-term gas supply.
Why did all four bids fail?
The department said the bidders could not provide gas-supply assurances to the level required in the request for proposals. South Africa imports most of its gas from Mozambique, where volumes are declining, and has no LNG receiving terminal, so developers could not guarantee fuel for the life of a power plant.
Who were the four bidders?
Khanyazwe Flexpower proposed 440 megawatts in Mpumalanga, Pictor GTP Consortium proposed 990 megawatts in KwaZulu-Natal, Kelvin Redevelopment proposed 600 megawatts in Gauteng, and Komatipoort Power proposed 800 megawatts in Mpumalanga. Together they offered 2,830 megawatts against a 2,000-megawatt target, under a revised request for proposals issued in October 2025.
What happens next for gas-to-power in South Africa?
The minister referred to a possible revised process, provisionally called Bid Window 1.5, with further information promised before the end of 2026. Any new round remains subject to statutory, governance and procurement approvals, and the separate 1,000-megawatt Coega window has yet to reach formal procurement.
Sources
- South African Government (Oct 28, 2026)
- Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- Business Day (Oct 28, 2026)