The department’s Kishan Pillay, its director of up-and midstream oil and gas, said on Thursday the gas unit, which will co-ordinate regional industrial development from the future exploitation of Southern Africa’s gas resources, intends to replicate the success of the independent power producer (IPP) programme unit in the Department of Energy.

That programme has contracted more than 6,000MW of power projects in the past six years and is recognised internationally for its efficiency.

The Department of Energy has spent several years working on a gas utilisation master plan (Gump) that Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said, almost a year ago, would be released in six months. The department did not respond to a question on a publication date for Gump.

An industry source said there was no conflict between the two endeavours. Gump would deal with broader gas policy issues than the Department of Trade and Industry’s unit.

Mr Pillay said the gas industrialisation unit would be a step towards practical implementation of policy. The Department of Trade and Industry and the programme office that developed Gump would collaborate on implementing the gas industrialisation policy.

"A good synergistic relationship currently exists between the IPP office and the (department)," he said.

Mr Pillay told a forum hosted by the South African Oil and Gas Alliance in Sandton that his department had monitored natural gas discoveries in Southern Africa and drawn lessons from other countries, including the US and Australia. Southern Africa needed to avoid the trap of simply extracting the gas and selling it elsewhere, he said.