adminONE of the worst feelings for any individual, family or organisation is that of yearning for something which is just within your reach.
In simple terms some call it “so near yet so far” while in our traditional circles it is literally translated to “feeling thirsty while your legs are immersed in water”.
Unfortunately that is the situation which is going on in the country at the moment when it comes to the use and extraction of the alternative source of energy called natural gas.
Over the past weeks the country has been experiencing a shortage of Liquefied Petroleum (LP) gas because its major supplier — a South African company — has gone on annual shutdown to facilitate the servicing of its equipment.
It simple terms, this exposed our over-reliance on imports and how it can backfire and bite us. We are dependant on companies in other countries.
If they sneeze we also catch the flu.
What is more painful however, is that this gas, unlike some of the products which we can hide behind and say we do not have or we are not producing, is available in the country.
Zimbabwe is home to extensive deposits of coal-bed methane gas in the Hwange-Lupane basins.
The quantities are estimated to be over 23 billion cubic feet per square mile or 27 trillion cubic feet.
These are massive deposits which can see the country not only supplying the local market but exporting as well.
So the question which many people might want to know is why we are importing the gas when the country has such readily available quantities.
In some cases we have tended to just gloat about resources which we are not yet ready to explore or which we don’t have the capacity to extract.
But on the gas issue, Government, through the Mines and Mining Development Minister Cde Walter Chidakwa last year announced that extraction of the gas in Lupane had started.
Addressing delegates at the 2014 edition of the Mine Entra in Bulawayo Minister Chidakwa went on to even describe the pumping of the gas as historical.
In his own words Cde Chidakwa said: “We have started pumping gas out of Lupane. It’s a truly historical moment, historical because it’s a project for many years and many governments have spoken about it and of course today we see the gas coming out. “And what do we do with the gas? The first thing is the production of power. The Ministry of Energy and Power Development and the proprietors of the project intend to expand the project. We now need to do extensive drilling so that we can extract more gas to generate more power.”
Twelve months after this historical announcement was made, we wake up to discover that there is not enough gas because our source in South Africa has failed to supply us.
This is embarrassing because we were made to believe that the gas is already being pumped out.
So where is the gas which Cde Chidakwa announced last year?
How come we are still exporting and sneezing when a South Africa-based company fails to supply gas which we indicated that we are already extracting.
These are pertinent issues which many people out there would want to know.
In Zimbabwe we have a history of celebrating projects which are not yet mature or rather taking a pedestrian approach while some countries are benefiting from our resources.
It is not surprising that maybe the company which is already extracting the gas is secretly exporting the gas under the guise of some technicality.
It is probable that some of the gas we then import would have originated from our own Lupane fields.
This happened with our diamonds in Marange in Manicaland. De Beers spent many years stationed in the area scooping our diamonds while telling the Government that they were still exploring.
By the time the Government realised that there were plenty of diamonds in the area, De Beers had exported large quantities of the mineral.
Right now we do not even know how many carats we lost during those De Beers years and the company will never tell us too.
This is not the only example, in Matabeleland North province, there are reports that some companies are mining diamonds along Bubi River still under the disguise of some technicality.
It just shows that something sinister is happening with our natural resources. Even those companies that have regularised their operations are busy exporting the ore while we are happy to then buy finished products made out of the our raw materials.
Platinum and diamonds are some of the examples where our minerals have contributed to the growth of other countries.
Some countries have built or expanded their platinum refineries based on our platinum and some diamond buying markets have flourished from the stones coming out of Zimbabwe’s belly.
Could this be what is also happening with our gas in Lupan? Reports indicated that Botswana, another country where we are importing gas from, was already tapping the natural gas from its end.
Natural gas, like most resources, is not renewable and a cubic feet extracted is gone for good.
By the time we realise that we can benefit from the gas, the biggest chunk will be gone in the same way as what happened to Marange diamonds.
We could not go for 10 years extracting alluvial diamonds in Marange because they are now finished.
Are we going to catch up late again in the gas problem and start running around when the gas is already finished?
The country is in the middle of implementing its economic blue print (Zim Asset) and maybe we tend to focus on mega projects which require a lot of foreign funding, leaving those which we have a comparative advantage.
One such is the gas project. Experts say we can even generate 300 megawatts of power from the project.
We cannot continue complaining about shortage of gas when the commodity is right under ground. These are some of the projects which must be prioritised so that we can realise the fruits of Zim Asset.
Online Reporter