It's ironic that the world's first commercial venture to convert gas to liquid fuels faces the worry of securing sufficient supplies of the feedstock.
The gas that feeds the plant formerly known as Mossgas - commissioned by state-owned oil and gas producer PetroSA in 1987 - is extracted from beneath the ocean bed off the southern Cape coast. But the suppliest would have dried up next year had the parastatal not embarked on a multibillion-rand programme to interconnect several gas reservoirs near its production area in the Bredasdorp basin.
The development, described by PetroSA boss Sipho Mkhize as "a host of technical wonders", will give the plant in Mossel Bay sufficient gas to last until 2012. .
Now PetroSA faces the added pressure of securing gas supplies to expand production. It currently produces more than 11 million barrels of liquid fuels a year at Mossel Bay.
The national treasury said in August it would drop a proposal to impose a supertax on producers of synthetic fuel, provided they committed to substantially higher production.
The decision appears to have given impetus to PetroSA's efforts to secure gas supplies beyond 2012.
Mkhize says the company is re-examining all its options. These range from exploration projects to importing gas and establishing the viability of piping coal-bed methane from the interior.
Clarity about PetroSA's plans should emerge after its executives meet officials from the treasury.
The Reserve Bank governor's talent as a raconteur has consistently led him to embellish his prepared speeches and entertain audiences with quirky economic insights, personal anecdotes and biting observations on the lending habits of bankers and the spending compulsions of South Africans.
But until recently, his prepared text has appeared on the central bank website - a fallback for people who couldn't make the occasion where Mboweni was speaking.
Perhaps the governor has started ad libbing so extensively that the speech he delivers bears no resemblance to the one prepared. Whatever the reason, the bank no longer publishes his speeches. This is a loss to the world, which would like to know what he was supposed to say as well as what he actually did say.
Mboweni talks extensively in public - a practice started by his predecessor, Chris Stals. Before Stals was governor, Gerhard de Kock spoke in public about three times a year. To compensate, however, De Kock's door was always open to journalists and others, and he was easily contactable by telephone. His successors have proved far more remote: seldom available and rarely returning phone calls.
One way or another, all three governors have played a valuable role educating South Africans about the relevance of the dismal science of economics to their own lives.
The taxman struck at midday on Friday - and, with the help of the police, had three people arrested in Pretoria for contempt of court.
Adrian Lackay, spokesperson for the SA Revenue Service (Sars), said those arrested had failed to respond to court summonses on a particular date to face charges for the non-submission of tax returns.
Sars is serving more than 500 summonses around the country: Durban will be hardest hit with 350 summonses coming its way, followed by Gauteng with 132, Port Elizabeth 30 and Cape Town 26. Sars has identified thousands of alleged multiple offenders who owe it a total of more than 450 000 outstanding returns.
Lackay warned that the queues at branch offices were already long and were expected to grow longer over the next three weeks. The deadline for the submission of income tax returns is the end of the month.
So hurry along!
- With contributions by Ingi Salgado, Donwald Pressley and Ethel Hazelhurst