The next stage in the exploration for gas and oil in the Muzarabani area is imminent with 20 very large trucks coming through Beitbridge over the next few days carrying the state-of-art equipment to be used by Australian firm Invictus Energy in a seismic survey to identify the best sites for sinking exploration wells.
Australia Stock Exchange-listed Invictus Energy, parent
firm of Geo-Associates that holds the Muzarabani grant, has registered
significant progress in trying to establish if there are commercially viable
reserves of oil and gas in Zimbabwe’s Cabora Bassa Basin, the geological
formation underlying the Muzarabani area.
French oil giant Mobil in the early 1990s did initial
seismic surveys, but decided not to follow up. However, Invictus using more
modern data processing techniques, reprocessed the data gathered and found
strong evidence that the underlying geological structures had the domes and
traps that could indicate oil and gas in Muzarabani.
Exploratory wells are required to see if those domes and
traps have indeed trapped the organic matter that decomposes to gas and oil,
but before that stage it is necessary to map the underlying geology more
precisely, and that is what Invictus is now going to do.
Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando said
yesterday the equipment should be at the site in the next 10 days.
“Seismic equipment offloaded from the ship in Durban today.
It is expected at Beitbridge border in the next three to four days en route to
a workshop in Harare for service checks for a week or so before proceeding to
Muzarabani,” said Minister Chitando.
Writing on micro-blogging site, Twitter, the Deputy Chief
Secretary to the President and Cabinet (Presidential Communications), Mr George
Charamba, also said the successful delivery of the equipment to be used in the
company’s seismic survey, followed the approval by President Mnangagwa of the
firm’s Petroleum Exploration Development and Production Agreement (PEDPA).
The PEDPA provides the framework for progression of the
Muzarabani project through the exploration, appraisal, development and
production phases and obligations and rights of each party over the project
lifecycle. The Australian firms needed this spelt out precisely before they
could commit the large sums required for the next stages of the exploration.
“Over 20 by 30-tonne low-bed trucks will roll into Zimbabwe
in the next few days taking the equipment straight into a workshop for service
checks before commencing the survey.
“The Zimbabwean industrial landscape will never be the
same. The US$12 billion mining economy (target by 2023) is within reach,” Mr
Charamba tweeted.
As part of the building blocks for Vision 2030, by which
Zimbabwe should have attained upper middle income economy status, the
Government is working on growing mineral exports from US$3,7 billion to US$12
billion a year although much of any natural gas and quite a bit of any
petroleum discovered in Muzarabani is more likely to be used within Zimbabwe to
fuel a major power station, provide feedstock raw materials for fertiliser and
other chemical industries and allow a modern refinery to be built for liquid
fuels and other petroleum-based raw materials.
“Brick by brick as promised by President Mnangagwa, we are
building Zimbabwe turning the fortunes of the Great Plateau between the Zambezi
and Limpopo Rivers for the better,” Mr Charamba said.
Invictus Energy awarded Canadian firm Polaris Natural
Resources the contract to undertake seismic survey, a way of mapping geology
through sub-surface vibrations.
Polaris intends to conduct, process, and interpret a
minimum of 400 kilometres of seismic lines to define the best site for the
first well, Mzarabani-1, as well as possible sites for future tests or
production wells.
Invictus Energy said recently that the Canadian firm had
conducted over 1 000 seismic projects since 1996 and introduced the first “low
impact seismic crew” into Africa in 2008.
Polaris has conducted over 15 seismic surveys in East
Africa and has been well accepted in all the communities where it has operated,
which was a plus when getting the contract to work in Zimbabwe.
The Australian company will use the data gathered from the
seismic survey to pinpoint sites on which oil and gas test wells will be
drilled. As the wells could be as much as 4km deep and cost up to US$15 million
each, Invictus is keen to ensure that the first well is sunk in the best
possible location.
President Mnangagwa said the PEDPA agreement would provide
a pathway for Zimbabwe to exploit its hydro carbons while commercial discovery
of oil and gas could bring significant downstream economic benefits.
Benefits expected to accrue include energy
self-sufficiency, petro-chemicals, increased revenue to the fiscus, growth of
exports, new job creation and the emergency of a multiplicity of downstream
industries among others. Herald
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