SAfrica power crisis halts gold, platinum mining

By James Macharia

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's three top gold producers and the world's biggest platinum miner suspended production at all their mines in the country on Friday due to a power crisis, helping send precious metal prices to new highs.

Shares in all the affected firms dived as the government on Friday called the power cuts that have gripped Africa's biggest economy for days "a national emergency".

AngloGold Ashanti (ANGJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Gold Fields (GFIJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and Harmony (HARJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said they had stopped all gold mining after they were informed by state-owned power utility Eskom ESCJ.UL that it could not guarantee power supply to their operations.

"We are only running power for emergency supplies, such as pumping water out, and have stopped producing at all mines," Steve Lenahan, a spokesman for AngloGold, the world's third biggest gold producer, told Reuters.

Officials said they did not know when normal power supplies would resume, or when they would re-start production.

"Eskom did not give us clarity on that, we don't know how long this will last," Graham Briggs, the chief executive officer at Harmony told Reuters.

"It seems to me this is not going to be a quick process (resolution). They issued us with a warning that we should only do emergency work, so we can't take a chance sending our people underground."

Briggs said Harmony expected to lose some 300 kg of gold output a day or 60 million rand in cash terms.