UPDATE 1-Katanga orders miners to cut power use to 40 pct

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KINSHASA May 2 (Reuters) - Mining and mineral processing companies in Congo's Katanga province, which produces copper and cobalt, have been ordered to sharply cut their use of electric power by reducing operations, a senior official said on Friday.

"We gave the order to the companies to limit themselves to around 40 percent of their needs. There are a lot who are obeying, but there are others that aren't. And that's creating problems and blackouts," said Musoka Kasweshi, the provincial minister of infrastructure.

Authorities in Katanga in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo had issued the order on April 26, a day after the theft of some 1,800 metres of electrical cables from one of three power lines linking the mining centres of Kolwezi, Likasi, and Lubumbashi in the province.

The theft had also affected power supplies to neighbouring Zambia's Copper Belt province, Kasweshi said.

Work to repair the lines began on Thursday and should be finished on Wednesday next week.

For the moment, power consumption for the Congolese province as a whole had been cut to 160 megawatts from a previous average of 320 megwatts, Kasweshi said.

"Power outages have been getting more frequent, but so far it hasn't affected us," Mark Parker, who works for First Quantum Minerals Ltd (FM.TO) in Lubumbashi, told Reuters.

First Quantum's Frontier mine produced 13,400 tonnes of copper in concentrate in the first three months of 2008, up from 8,712 tonnes in the previous quarter, when it started operations.

To make matters worse, Katanga's four main power stations were all operating below capacity, Kasweshi said.

"These are the big stations that power big industries and the mining sector in general," he added.

Theft of electrical cables to extract their metal is a persistent problem in Katanga, the most strategic of Democratic Republic of Congo's mining areas. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/) (Reporting by Joe Bavier; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Peter Blackburn)