Kinetiko Energy Ltd (ASX:KKO, OTC:KKOEF) has taken a major step in a strategy to help alleviate South Africa’s energy crisis by becoming the first company in the country to produce power from onshore gas.
In a first of its kind in South Africa, Kinetiko has successfully demonstrated power production from a gas well at Amersfoort in cooperation with FFS Refiners by constructing a fully compliant gas train on-site to feed a 1.2MW gas generator.
Gas was produced from one existing gas well, which forms parts of a 5-well cluster in ER271, known as the Korhaan cluster, near Amersfoort.
Plans for production cluster
This primes the company’s plans to develop an LNG production cluster of approximately 30 wells at this location as part of its joint venture with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC).
It is an important move in the company’s development of an energy transition solution for South Africa focused on commercialising advanced shallow conventional gas projects in the Mpumalanga, Freestate and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.
“Pioneers of onshore GTP”
Kinetiko CEO Nick de Blocq said: “We have spent the last few months working hard to demonstrate the company’s ability to generate power from our natural gas at its Amersfoort project in Mpumalanga.
"We obtained respected, professional engineering and equipment suppliers to support this project and we are absolutely thrilled to have become the pioneers of onshore Gas To Power (GTP) from a local, conventional source, which represents another significant milestone for the company, establishing it as a proven solution within the energy mix planned to alleviate South Africa’s energy crisis.”
Gas generator powering on KKO gas flow from The Beast well.
Runs gas generator
On May 5, 2024, natural gas, supplied by a single well, Korhaan-1 (aka ‘The Beast’) in the vicinity of Amersfoort in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa, ran a gas generator linked to a newly built gas train.
This generator was a 12-cylinder CAT, capable of 1.2MW output, and supplied and containerised by Barloworld of Johannesburg. The gas generator was disassembled after the 4-day trial and returned to Barloworld.
The calibrated gas quality meter measured close to 99% methane and 1% nitrogen during the flow periods.
This milestone represents a significant step forward, illuminating the potential of the company’s substantial 6Tcf 2C gas resource to provide desperately needed power to South Africa’s economy and proves the ability of its high-quality natural gas to be utilised commercially.
Kinetiko intends to produce LNG from this specific field, which will require GTP to energise the eventual production wellfield (pumps, instrumentation, cryoboxes, etc.) off-grid. Numerous gas samples were collected for lab analysis.
Field visit
KKO management presenting the project to guests at the field visit.
The company and demonstration of GTP partner FFS Refiners hosted a field visit event on May 7, 2024, with more than 50 representatives from the investment, technical, regulatory and gas users’ industries attending to see the gas generator rigged up and witness flaring from four of the team of production wells known as the Korhaan cluster.
As part of the company’s non-binding MoU and intention to co-develop and co-fund gas production fields in South Africa, the company worked alongside and shared costs with FFS to complete the demonstration of GTP.
With the proof-of-concept GTP completed, the parties intend to progress in their collaboration to develop an LNG production field, with FFS having an existing relationship with the micro LNG containerised production group Galileo Technologies.