There will be no fuel shortages in the country-Government

ENERGY and Water Development permanent secretary George Zulu has allayed fears that there would be fuel shortages in the country.

“There is no looming fuel shortage in Zambia,” Mr Zulu said, “The country has enough fuel stocks to last 20 days if Indeni was to shut down today.”

The Sunday Mail yesterday reported a looming fuel shortage as feed stock at Indeni Oil Refinery has run out. The Sunday Mail also reported that the oil refinery would shut down.

But Mr Zulu said in an interview in Lusaka that the shutdown of Indeni on Saturday was necessitated by the change of a pump at the sea terminal in Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.

Mr Zulu explained that Tazama has shifted from using a pump for only crude oil and has installed a modern machine which is able to pump both crude oil and finished oil products from the sea terminal to Zambia’s fuel farm storage facilities at the port in Dar-es-Salaam.

“The shutdown at Indeni was to allow for a shift from the old SBM pump to a new one that pumps white and crude oil at the same time,” Mr Zulu said.

He said the country currently has 35, 600 million litres of petrol, enough to last nine days in the event that Indeni is shut down.

Mr Zulu has since appealed to members of the public not to panic-buy fuel products as the country has enough stocks.
He said the exercise of changing the pump at sea has since been successfully completed and a ship docked on Saturday at 16:00 hours.

Mr Zulu said he just came back from Dar-es-Salaam on Saturday where he had gone on an inspection tour of all Tazama pumping stations.

He said Tazama started pumping crude oil from Dar-es-Salaam to Indeni around 17:00 hours on Saturday and dispelled talk of the country experiencing fuel shortages.

Mr Zulu said Tazama has capacity for 68,500,000 litres of diesel enough to last 30 days.

He further said Government is working hard to ensure that the country is fed with crude oil.

“The PF government will not wait to witness fuel shortage. We are doing everything we know how to make sure the product is available,” Mr Zulu said.

He said Government has taken all measures necessary to make sure there is no fuel shortage in the country.

Mr Zulu explained that a tender has been advertised for the supply of both crude oil and finished products and will be closing on March 23.

“This tender is open to everyone who wants to participate,” he said.

Mr Zulu said Government is also constructing storage tanks in all provincial centres in the country so that the country can have enough reserves in the future.

He said work is progressing well on the construction of the storage tanks in Lusaka and Mpika and that the Lusaka storage tanks will be ready for commissioning by August this year.

Mr Zulu said after works are completed on the Lusaka and Mpika storage tanks, contractors will move on site in Choma and Mongu for a similar exercise.

He said the decision has been necessitated by the increasing demand for petroleum products.

Lusaka will have the biggest storage tanks followed by Solwezi which will be serving the mines in the North-Western Province.

Oil marketing companies in the country pick up fuel at Tazama terminal. Fuel intake ranges from 600 litres to a million litres of petrol per day depending on demand while diesel ranges from a million to two million litres uptake per day. An average of 90 trucks lift fuel from Tazama terminal every day.

A check at the terminus found Ndhandho, Oilcom and CB trucking from Tanzania and Zimbabwe respectively offloading the finished petroleum products.

David Juma, a Tanzanian transporter and employee of Ndhandho Company, said enough finished products were being transported into Zambia from Dar-es-Salaam.