Former Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals and Director of Tanzania Oxygen, Lawrence Masha.
With abundant gas reserves Tanzania requires suitable policies, laws, right skills and legal expertise to manage contracts for successful participation in the gas economy and the common man to benefit.
This is the view of stakeholders who also felt that without right skills and legal expertise the country is likely to be unsuccessful in exploiting the sector’s potentials.
They said it will thus fail to meet expectations of wananchi in benefiting from the God-given precious natural resources.
They were speaking on Monday at a debate entitled ‘Oil and Gas in Tanzania: Geopolitics and Development’ held at the Alliance Française premises in Dar es Salaam and organised by the French Embassy in Tanzania.
Former Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals and Director of Tanzania Oxygen, Lawrence Masha, noted that it will take many years for Tanzanians to benefit from the gas economy. He said this is because it took the country more than three years to prepare the gas policy.
Masha said the government should invest in training legal experts and human resources to be able to service the market.
“There are so many other things to be done, but at least there should be a mechanism to ensure that the public benefits,” said Masha. He insisted that the country should have the right policies and laws.
However, he said Tanzania has the best Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) although its implementation is a great challenge.
Chairman of the Oil, Natural Gas and Environment Alliance (ONGEA), Dennis Mwendwa, said Tanzania entered into the gas and oil economy without having clear policies. He suggested that it should withhold all the projects until the laws are in place, adding:
“We should wait for the laws and policies…this will help us to ease negotiations.”
Associate Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in the Chemical Engineering department, Abraham Temu, said local people should benefit from oil and gas exploration by participating in the whole process.
He said apart from having good policies, it is necessary to train local people so that investors can get the required manpower.
Prof Temu said the UDSM and University of Dodoma (UDOM) have embarked on training specialists in the sector. He said UDSM has more than 50 students undertaking studies on petroleum engineering, petroleum geology and petroleum chemistry.
Prof Issa Shivji, a Senior Lecturer at the UDSM underscored the need for broader participation of wananchi through education.
He said the natural resources in Tanzania have a great potential to its economy and the world. So it is important to ensure that they do not turn into a curse.
Prof Shivji mentioned some countries where such natural resources have resulted into wars as Libya, Chad, Mali and the Central African Republic.
Last month, the government announced another major discovery of gas in Mtwara Region estimated to be between 1 and 1.8 trillion cubic feet.
This brings the total amount of natural gas in the region‘s Block 2 to approximately 22 trillion cubic feet, according to the Minister for Energy and Minerals, George Simbachawene.
Tanzania has so far discovered a total of 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (TCF) in onshore and offshore fields at Mnazi bay in Mtwara and the remote Island of Songo Songo in Lindi Region, according to the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) report ending June 2014.
Mtwara and Lindi hold a key role in the gas industry development. It is expected that their residents will have a large share of the benefits from the resource.
These include electricity supply, water, education, tarmac roads, jobs and industries.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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