DON Ncube has spent the 11 years since the unbundling of diversified empowerment company Real Africa Holdings in pursuing his first love: resources.Ncube is a true pioneer. Real Africa was one of the first empowerment companies when it was launched in the mid-1990s.Ncube is almost 69 but he has lost none of his verve. He could sell ice to Eskimos and there’s a good chance he can motivate SA’s bureaucrats, who continue to dither about how to develop SA’s undeveloped gas resources.In 2005 former JSE chairman Norman Lowenthal introduced Ncube to two Americans, petroleum engineer Brian Hughes and petroleum geologist Paul Tromp. Hughes and Tromp had worked in Wyoming’s coal-rich Powder River Basin and were eager to explore SA’s potential for coal bed methane (CBM).CBM is gas emitted by coal seams. It can be extracted without fracking or mining the coal, cleaned and sold as compressed natural gas to replace diesel in vehicles or power stations or for industrial and household use. At prese...
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