Last checked at 
* President meets with management, board of crippled power
utility
* Power generation units slowly coming back online
* Miners counting their losses after closures
(Adds Eskom COO comments, more details of mines reopening,
analyst quote)
By Helen Reid and Alexander Winning
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 11 (Reuters) - South African state power
utility Eskom scaled back power cuts on Wednesday, providing
relief to mining companies that were able to restart operations
hit earlier this week by the worst blackouts in a decade.
A week of heavy rains across parts of South Africa has
caused flooding, leading to evacuations and aggravating problems
at the cash-strapped and indebted power company, which has been
struggling to keep the lights on since 2008.
Eskom said it planned to reduce national grid supplies by
2,000 megawatts (MW) on Wednesday, down from a 6,000 MW
reduction on Monday. But the company added that the probability
for continued loadshedding, or planned rolling blackouts,
"remained high for the rest of the week".
Chief Operations Officer Jan Oberholzer told Reuters the
power cuts earlier in the week were caused by a "perfect storm"
of extreme rainfall and breakdowns at coal-fired power plants.
One coal mine and three power stations had flooded, he said.
Unplanned breakdowns were occurring across Eskom's
coal-fired plants because previous managers had not done
critical mid-life maintenance, he added.
The breakdowns were likely to persist as Eskom has neither
the spare generating capacity nor the money to take all of the
faulty coal units off-line and overhaul them, Oberholzer said.
The power cuts, which have disrupted the supply of
electricity to businesses and households across South Africa,
dealt a further blow to an economy already teetering on the
brink of recession.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who cut short a state visit to
Egypt as the power crisis deepened, met with Eskom's management
and board on Wednesday.
"The president has put it on record that the issue of
loadshedding ... is a national crisis," Ramaphosa's spokeswoman
Khusela Diko told news channel eNCA. "He wants to understand how
we got here."
In the short run, a combination of drier weather and work
places shutting down for Christmas will cool demand for power,
relieving pressure on the grid, said Azar Jammine, director of
South Africa-based consultancy Econometrix.
But he added: "it has created a lot of uncertainty over
whether we can rely on energy security in South Africa, and that
in itself is going to damage economic growth."
BACK IN BUSINESS
Mining firms including Harmony Gold and
Sibanye-Stillwater were forced to cut production on
Monday because of power shortages.
Sibanye-Stillwater said its underground operations had
resumed on Tuesday afternoon but would still operate with 10%
less power than normal.
"We lost a day's shifts. It will have an impact on quarterly
results. It will be noticeable," said James Wellsted, spokesman
for Sibanye-Stillwater. "It's a cumulative impact of all the
different stages of load curtailment."
Harmony said on Wednesday it had also resumed shifts at its
underground mines on Tuesday afternoon.
Impala Platinum, which had said its losses due to
the power cuts had amounted to 120 million rand ($8.16 million),
resumed operations at its mines from 1600 GMT on Tuesday.
Its deep-level Rustenburg and Marula mines, which halted
production for a day, were still operating with 15% less power
than normal on Wednesday, a spokesman said.
Petra Diamonds restarted operations at its Cullinan,
Finsch and Koffiefontein mines on Tuesday evening after halting
them on Monday when asked by Eskom to reduce its electricity
load.
AngloGold Ashanti shut down all its mines on Monday
night and reopened them around 0600 GMT on Tuesday, a
spokeswoman said.
"This obviously is a disruption to production," she said,
declining to quantify the impact.
South Africa's cash-strapped state-owned companies have been
a major headache for Ramaphosa who came to power nearly two
years ago vowing to reverse years of mismanagement and economic
stagnation.
On Monday, he vowed to take "drastic" steps if necessary to
ensure their survival.
South African Airways was placed in bankruptcy protection
last week and an independent administrator was appointed to run
the state's passenger rail company on Monday.
But loss-making Eskom, which generates more than 90% of the
country's power, is the "most serious risk" to the economy, the
Treasury says. This is largely because of its 500 billion rand
of debt, mostly government-backed.
Credit rating agency Moody's has said Eskom's troubles
endanger South Africa's only surviving investment-grade rating.
($1 = 14.7075 rand)
(Additional reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Writing by Joe
Bavier; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
