We will farm our own oil wells - minister

OUR resolve as Government is to ensure that we begin to farm our own oil wells which will create sustainability in terms of oil provision for our country, Minister of Mines and Mineral Development Richard Musukwa has said.

Mr Musukwa said Government had made significant steps in dividing the entire country into oil blocks and currently the country had 38 oil blocks.

He said yesterday in Parliament that the oil blocks were held by both Zambians and foreign nationals.

“And I want to state Madam Speaker on the six prospective oil blocks which have made significant steps is that in fact they are held by Zambians and we hope that at an opportune time Madam Speaker we will be able to issue a ministerial statement to that effect so that Members of Parliament can ask in depth.

But just to indicate that Government has now created a unit in a Geological Survey called the Hydro Carbon Unit. As you know the petroleum exploration is a specialised exploration and for a long time we didn’t have treasury authority for this unit.

“So Cabinet has approved and this unit has formed a directorate to completely deal with hydro carbon which has been instituted and now we are building capacity in terms of human capital because we need to get players across,” Mr Musukwa said.

The minister said currently the ministry was getting support from a Japanese company which was helping with the process.

Mr Musukwa also said there was need to increase funding and capacity to the petroleum sub sector in order to ensure increase on the inspectorate in order to be on top of things in terms of exploration of oil.