Dar es Salaam. Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on Tuesday, March 7, 2023.
Govt says discussions with Shell, Equinor to unlock US$30 billion LNG project ‘completed’
Minister of Energy January Makamba said on Monday that discussions with Shell, Equinor and their partners have been completed on the contractual terms of a critical host government agreement (HGA) that will underpin the project are now being drawn up.
The project aims to pipe some 40 trillion cubic feet of gas held in deepwater blocks 1, 2 and 4 to a 10 million tonnes per annum LNG plant at Lindi. The partners in the project include ExxonMobil, Pavilion Energy and Medco Energi.
“Negotiations for this LNG project have been completed, and experts are currently writing up two large contracts,” said Mr Makamba in Arusha.
Apart from the HGA agreement, other contracts include an integrated production-sharing contract covering the three offshore blocks that will supply gas to the Lindi facility.
Mr Makamba said that while these contracts will run to more than 600 pages, he wants this work completed quickly, partly because negotiations have taken far longer than initially planned.
“It is not a small task, but I have insisted that they finish the work this month to be able to continue with other implementation steps,” he explained.
He pointed out the project, whose investment is more than 70 trillion Tanzania shillings — about US$30 billion — “will bring about a major economic revolution in the country and make Tanzania one of the countries contributing to energy security in the world”.
Earlier last year, President Samia Suluhu Hassan suggested that if an HGA could be concluded by the end of 2022, a final investment decision on Tanzania LNG would be possible in 2025.
Road accident leaves nine dead in Katavi
Katavi Regional Police Commander Katavi Ali Makame said on Tuesday that a road accident involving a passenger’s bus killed nine while leaving thirty others injured in the region after the bus plunged into a valley of Mountain Nkondwe in Tanganyika district.
The government-owned Daily News newspaper quoted Makame as saying that the accident occurred on March 5, 2023, at 3.45 PM, with the Tanganyika Rungwe District Chief Medical Officer Dr Alex Mrema confirming to the paper that nine people died on the spot while 30 were injured.
The report added that five of the deceased were men, including two elderly, two children and four women, including a pregnant woman.
The accident comes less than a month after another deadly accident killed 12 people and injured 63 others on February 9, 2023, after an up-country passenger bus and a lorry collided at Silwa Pandambili village in Kongwa along the Dodoma-Morogoro highway.
A week before the February 9th accident, another road accident that killed 17 people and injured 12 others when a commuter bus transporting mourners to Kilimanjaro to burry their kin collided with a lorry at Magila Gerezani, Segera in Korogwe, Tanga.
According to the Global Status Report on road safety by the World Health Organisation (WHO), road accidents account for 6.12 per cent of total deaths in Tanzania, with an actual count of around 18,054 deaths annually.
Tanzania also loses approximately 3.4 per cent of its GDP in caring for traumatised victims and burying casualties, according to analyses by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GSRP) and the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).
Govt to introduce boat in Indian Ocean to promote water tourism
Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism said Monday that plans are at the final stages to introduce the first-ever modern 50-seater tourist boat in the Indian Ocean to boost water tourism.
In a statement, the ministry said the locally-made boat owned by the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA) will be launched by Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism Mohamed Mchengerwa.
The boat, called TAWA Sea Cruiser, has been made by Songoro Marine Transport Limited, East Africa’s boat building and repairing company with over 20 years of experience, said the statement.
“The boat has been fitted with modern equipment, including a magnifying glass, enabling tourists to see marine resources and species, including coral reefs, whale sharks, sea turtles, and coelacanth,” said the statement.
The statement added that some of these marine species, including coelacanth, have been declared rare by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Introducing a tourist boat in the Indian Ocean is part of efforts by the government to increase the number of tourist arrivals to 5 million and earnings from the sector to US$6 billion by 2025.
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