Government ministries’ permanent secretaries were fully satisfied with the progress made on the construction of Madimba gas processing plant and the underwater gas pipeline from Songosongo to Dar es Salaam upon their visit to Lindi and Mtwara.
Besides solving the issue of energy crisis and putting an end to constant power outages, the projects are thought to uplift local communities and bring new investment and manufacturing opportunities to the region.
The 100 per cent government owned Songosongo processing plant is thought to help Tanzania stop being dependent on oil turbines and would diversify its energy sources.
According to the state run power company Tanesco Managing Director, the current spending of the government on the oil turbines around the country accounts for roughly 1 trillion annually, and would be decreased by 3 bln. daily upon the completion of the pipeline and gas processing plant construction.
Based on the project manager of the Tanzania Natural Gas Transportation Pipeline project, Mr. Kapuulya Musomba, for the initial stage of the project, Songosongo and Somangafungu gas pipelines would combined ferry around 350 million cubic feet of gas, with the numbers doubling to 750 million cubic feet of gas upon the completion of the project.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Minerals promised that the new gas economy is going to bring economic growth and reduce the power tariffs up to four times from 40 US dollar cents to 10-20 cents per unit of electricity.
Additional benefit of the Madimba plant is going to be Madimba water purification of 130 million litres of water per hour.
The Madimba plant, processing the Mnazi Bay gas, will have its first machines installed before June while the whole project is supposed to be completed by the end of 2014.
