U.S. multinational oil and gas company ExxonMobil signed a preliminary agreement to supply liquefied natural gas to the planned Zululand Energy Terminal, or ZET, in Richards Bay, South Africa, Reuters reported on June 17. This comes after ZET struck an agreement with South African state-owned utility Eskom on June 5 to supply the latter's planned 3,000 megawatt gas-to-power plant in Richards Bay.

South Africa is seeking to develop alternatives to its coal-fired power plants to meet its emissions-reduction targets, while simultaneously maintaining baseload power capacity. Eskom's Richards Bay gas-to-power plant has been stalled since 2025, when South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal set aside the state-owned company's environmental authorization, ruling that the previous environmental impact assessment had a flawed public participation process. Since then, ZET representatives have postponed their final investment decision for the terminal to 2028.