Oil, gas exports boom
PRELIMINARY results of seismic study by Invictus Energy in Muzarabani, which have shown great potential for existence of hydrocarbons, represent an opportunity for a huge breakthrough in export earnings growth for Zimbabwe, the firm indicated recently.
In organic chemistry, hydrocarbons can generally be defined as a compound of hydrogen and carbon, such as any of those which are the chief components of petroleum and natural gas.
Zimbabwe is now well placed to make a potential landmark discovery of either oil or gas on the strength of highly promising results from sub-surface vibration data gathering exercise (seismic) undertaken by the company between September and October 2021.
What is most exciting about prospects for oil and gas discovery in Zimbabwe, though, is that apart from huge potential for job creation and energy self-sufficiency, the Muzarabani project represents a potentially transformative foreign currency earner from oil or gas.
Given the negative impact of limited foreign currency stock in the country, a sudden boom in export earnings would be the panacea imports dependent Zimbabwe requires to bring eternal stability to its battered and fledgling domestic currency.
As such, Zimbabwe is more than happy to embrace the opportunity for a ready regional market given its strategic location within the Sadc region, comprising 12 countries and 230 million citizens, in addition to being the centre of the region’s electricity trading administration and distribution network.
What is also exciting, in the event of commercial discovery, is the fact that the region’s biggest economy and consumer of energy, South Africa, will retire about 20 percent (10 000 megawatts) of its coal fired power stations in the coming years.
This comes as gas, which is believed to be the predominant fossil fuel in Muzarabani and is estimated to exist in elephant scale abundance, is progressively becoming the energy source of choice in Africa and the rest of the world.
This dovetails into the Government’s plans, which in April signed a petroleum exploration development and production agreement (PEDPA) with Invictus, as it has targeted to grow the mining industry to a US$12 billion industry by 2023.
The company said there was a “medium-term supply gap of plus 15 000MW, set to be filled by diesel fired power generation in the interim. Invictus also said “SAPP (Southern Africa Power Pool) network provides a virtual pipeline to monetise gas throughout Southern Africa with SG 4571 ideally positioned to deliver gas into the power network”.
Invictus’ Muzarabani special grant represents the largest undrilled conventional oil and gas prospect onshore Africa, potentially hosting 8,2 trillion cubic feet plus 247 million barrels of conventional gas-condensate 1 (~1,6 billion boe).
Only last month the Australia Stock Exchange (ASX) listed company completed an independently verified infill seismic survey and is now preparing for a high impact basin opening drilling campaign in the first half of next year.
“Following the completion of the Cahora Bassa 2021 seismic survey in early November (2021), which acquired a total of 839,3 kilometres of high resolution 2D seismic data, preliminary processing by EarthSignal of selected lines is demonstrating encouraging results.
Results from early processing of the “amplitude anomalies can often be indicative of the presence of hydrocarbons” as does “preliminary stack unscaled version, with a focus on the anomalous amplitudes in the Muzarabani structure”, which show “potential “flat spots”, “which could be a potential indication of a hydrocarbon contact”.
Invictus said the previous survey acquired by Mobil will be reprocessed by EarthSignal in conjunction with the Cahora Basa 2021 survey to integrate the legacy dataset and apply insights to the entire Cahora Bassa Basin,” Invictus said in a statement on Friday.
Amid promising results of oil and gas discovery in Muzarabani, Invicuts said opportunities included the fact that Gas to Power can be generated locally and excess exported to neighbouring countries through Southern Africa Power Pool Petrochemicals.
South Africa’s Sasol’s Secunda facility, Invictus said, was currently supplied from declining onshore Mozambique Pande-Temane fields and while a significant potential market existed for coal to liquid feedstock.
Further, the is scope for expanded markets in the sense that Zimbabwe and Zambia are large agriculture based economies and significant producers of tobacco and maize, creating fertile ground for using gas to make fertilisers where demand already exceeds supply
Currently, industrial demand for gas in South Africa is being serviced from onshore Mozambique mining while a significant number of mining houses and smelters in Zimbabwe and the region currently generate off grid power using diesel.
Additionally, the single largest potential market targeted by Invictus Energy, South Africa, generates synthetic fuel from coal with remainder imported crude oil, refined locally. Condensate/crude exported from Beira to international markets.