The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
THE Government is in the process of crafting a new framework for the exploration and exploitation of coalbed methane (CBM) as it forges ahead to engage private players to harness the natural gas for the generation of power.
Energy and Power Development Minister Advocate Fortune Chasi told Sunday News Business in an interview last week that his ministry was working together with the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development to come up with a policy on the exploration and mining of CBM.
“Some of these matters straggle to the Ministry of Energy (Power Development) and Mines (and Mining Development) but we work very closely together. We are working on establishing the necessary policy and regulatory framework, so that people who want to carry out exploration will find the framework available. The framework will have to be something, which is internationally acceptable. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We want a documentation that is known and acceptable by players in the sector,” he said.
Adv Chasi further stated that the Government was looking forward at engaging in private partnership for the exploitation of natural gas for power generating purposes.
“As Government we have no desire of generating power from those (CBM) areas. Our interest is making sure we open up the spaces for the private sector and we facilitate investment,” he said.
CBM or natural gas deposits are in Matabeleland North in the Hwange-Binga-Lupane area as well as the south east Lowveld area in Chiredzi.
It is estimated that the country has more than 40 trillion cubic feet of potentially recoverable methane gas in Matabeleland North.
Uses of natural gas include domestic use for heating and cooking, industrial uses in electricity generation and production of chemicals such as ammonia based fertilisers. Methane gas has been taunted as one of the alternative energy sources, which can be harnessed to alleviate power shortages as the country grapples with deficit a deficit of over 1 000 megawatts (MW).
In recent decades, CBM has become an important source of energy in United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. The term refers to methane adsorbed into the solid matrix of the coal.
There are two mining companies namely Zambezi Gas and Discovery Investments that are registered by the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development to mine natural gas in the Lupane area. However, Kusile Rural District Council in Lupane has since approached Government to consider revoking Discovery Investments’ mining licence together with two prospective coal mining companies for taking long to kick-start their energy resources projects.
Discovery Investments seeks to extract coalbed methane gas within its Special Grant situated at Mzola and Dandanda communal areas.
The company was issued with an Environmental Impact Assessment certificate by the Environmental Management Agency in 2015 to start setting up its infrastructure in preparation to start harnessing the methane gas at its concession. The gas has an estimated lifespan of about 50 years.
In another development, Adv Chasi also said there were investors that have expressed interest towards investing in the rehabilitation of the country’s three thermal power stations namely Harare, Bulawayo and Munyati.
“We are looking at a variety of factors around the rehabilitation of the country’s small thermal power stations. There have been investors that have expressed interest in doing that and we want to see the practicality of the arrangements that they have proposed . . . we want a holistic and long-lasting solution. We have to determine the small thermals’ role in our future energy mix,” he said.
