Gas firm makes strides in Lupane

Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
MINES and Mining Development Deputy Minister Fred Moyo says Discovery Investments has made significant progress to tap into coal-bed methane gas in Lupane.

Discovery Investments, is one of the companies the government has granted concessions under the Lupane Coal-bed Methane Gas Project expected to boost Zimbabwe’s energy generation capacity by an additional 300 megawatts.

“A company called Discovery is one of those companies that has done substantial work and have established minable resource of this gas.

“Other companies have concessions in the area namely ZMDC and Hwange Colliery. These companies are looking for partners to help them develop this gas potential. We invite interested companies that wish to enter this sector to approach the ministry so that we can give them support to enter the sector,” said Deputy Minister Moyo while responding to questions in Parliament Wednesday.

He said Discovery Investments has done work to the extent of reaching commercial stage.

He said the government is negotiating with the company to see what structure of investment can be put in place so that the company can move to the stage of gas development.

“The other companies that I mentioned are very far from reaching production stage as they still have to do exploration work. So, I would say for those companies that are still to do exploration work, it’s probably an issue of raising funding, finding partners who will be able to take them into this first stage of exploring for the gas.

“So, we can only look for this one company that has done enough work to reach commercial stage,” he said.

Zimbabwe has the largest coal gas resources in southern Africa and the government has granted a number of companies coal-bed methane gas concessions within the Lupane-Lubimbi area.

Gas reserves in the Lupane-Lubimbi basin are estimated at over 23 billion cubic feet.

The government granted the exploration of gas a National Project Status in 2007 but did not take off until 2014.

Coal gas is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds.

In recent years, it has become an important source of energy, predominantly used in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Methane gas is mostly used in power generation and fertilizer production.