peter
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Reporter
THE Government is expediting the expansion of petroleum transmission infrastructure particularly the Beira-Harare oil pipeline to increase movement of oil products to three billion litres up from 2.1 billion litres pumped into the country per annum as it moves to further stabilise petroleum supplies.
The development is also in response to the expected surge in economic activities inspired by the implementation of the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) and the need to limit infrastructure damages through transportation of the products by road.
Speaking to Sunday News recently, the Minister of Energy and Power Development, Cde Soda Zhemu, said a lot was happening on the ground to improve on the security of petroleum supply in the country with the expansion of the pipeline capacity being one of them.
He said Zimbabwe needs about five million litres of petroleum products per day to drive the economy and the demand was expected to increase due to enhanced economic activities which were a pointer to economic growth.
He said Government through the National Oil and Infrastructure Company (NOIC) was installing booster pumps that would increase the pumping capacity of petroleum products as well as working on other expansion works.
“NOIC which is one of the entities under my ministry is currently working on expanding the transmission system, the line that brings the product from Beira into the country. Currently it is bringing in about 2.1 billion litres but the intention is to achieve an improved import of at least three billion litres of the product into the country. This will be for the purposes of servicing the requirements of the country as well as servicing other countries that are up north like Zambia and DRC. We want them to pick the product from Zimbabwe so that they do not damage our roads like what is obtaining now as they get it from Beira,” said Cde Zhemu.
He said NOIC was also working on other projects like the Liquefied Petroleum gas storage for the purposes of improving security of supply of the product.
“The intention within the NDS1 period is to get about 2 000 metric tonnes storage capacity in Ruwa. They are already working on the first phase of 500 metric tonnes that is set to be completed by the end of the year. By September they should be through with the first storage capacity and a lot more projects that are under the purview of NOIC. They have since completed the storage for ethanol as a way of improving security of supply.
It is one of our strategies for reducing on imports to blend our unleaded petrol with ethanol. We have been varying blending levels over the years and our intention now is to have storage capacity and be able to blend to the maximum level of 20 percent. We there are anticipating to have adequate storage capacity especially during of non-production periods for our major producing companies like Green Fuel and FEZ,” said Minister Zhemu.
He added that there has been stability in the petroleum service sector and attributed the development to good policies by Government.
“We have seen a proliferation of service stations in most parts of the country. That attests to the policies that we have adopted as Government to ensure that there is efficiency in the distribution of petroleum products. The construction of these service stations means they are dividends that are being harnessed.
“In the past we used to see people queuing for fuel, spending much of their productive time on queues but that has since changed. This has been a result of the Government’s innovativeness in coming up with new policies.
We now have what we call the Direct Fuel Imports (DFI) scheme where the private sector participates without queuing for funding from the Central Bank and that has improved the performance of the sector,” said Minister Zhemu. @nyeve14
Online Reporter