Energy companies claim to have discovered natural gas in northern Zimbabwe, with the country’s government expressing hope that the discovery, if it can be exploited, will help reduce the need for expensive imported energy.
The discovery made in Cabora Bassa Basin, near the country’s northern border with Mozambique and Zambia, is ”one of the most significant developments in the onshore oil and gas sector in the southern African region,” Zhemu Soda, Zimbabwe’s minister of mines and mining development, said in a recent statement. “It’s obviously a significant development of the company’s history, we have successfully recovered a total of 400 carbon samples from two zones, Scott Macmillan, managing director of the Australia-based Invictus Energy, echoed the minister’s words. “This is the first triassic discovery in sub–Saharan Africa and one of the significant developments in the onshore oil and gas industry in onshore for many decades,” Macmillan added.
Invictus, one of the companies operating in the region, has about 360,000 hectares in the Cabora Bassa Basin for prospecting for oil and gas. The equipment and data that Invictus and other companies are using to explore the area were left by the oil giant Mobil before it left the country in the 1990s. Despite the announcement of the major gas field discovery, there is some palpable weariness among ordinary citizens who feel they’ve heard this all before and also because they are doubtful the discovery would yield any significant fortunes for them. Others, like Farai Maguwu, founding director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, fear the new project could displace local people, destroy the environment and contaminate underground water. Maguwu has a solution, saying that “there is business sense in investment in renewable energy.”