Following the extended controversy over the merits of procuring power from Karpowership, the Turkish company says it's willing to enter into a five-year deal.

Seemingly desperate to clinch a multibillion-rand "emergency" electricity supply deal with South Africa, the Turkish Karpowership group has offered to cut the original 20-year contract down to five years. But there is a catch: the price tag for a shorter contract would shoot up.

In a television interview with eNCA journalist Annika Larsen on 9 August, Karpowership chief commercial officer Zeynep Harezi asserted that her company was ready to dispatch five floating powerships to South Africa and to start generating electricity within "90 days" or less.

"We are ready to come for only five years [instead of 20 years as specified in the current government proposal]," she said -- though she was careful to add that her Istanbul-based company did not rule out an extension to the proposed contract after five years.

Harezi's public gambit follows a lengthy and heated controversy about the merits of entering into a protracted and costly energy deal with the Turkish majority-owned floating powerships company.

The exact cost of the deal remains secret, though the CSIR has estimated that it could be around R228-billion.

Since then, the price of gas has rocketed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- a factor acknowledged by Harezi, who suggested...