ZCCM

ZCCM-IH should quickly establish how much oil is present in Gwembe
By Chief Editor - January 26, 2020

Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba
Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba
Investments Holdings Plc (ZCCM-IH) should quickly establish how much oil is present in Gwembe so that the country can start benefiting from the discovery, Green Party president Peter Sinkamba has said.

Mr. Sinkamba said the country was anxious about the discovery and now that it has been proved that indeed Gwembe was sitting on a crude oil belt, the Government should empower ZCCM-IH to establish the sustainability of the discovery.

“Now that the Daily Nation has done its part by carrying out an investigation that established that there is presence of oil, the ball is now in the hands of Government to find out if the oil quantities underground were enough to be extracted for the benefit of the country,” Mr. Sinkamba said.

He said there was the need for the country to take advantage of the discovery of crude oil at Jongola river and Simwami mountains in Gwembe as it was the only solution to dealing with the current high price of fuel in Zambia.

Mr. Sinkamba noted that now that it has been confirmed that there is crude oil in the country, there was a likelihood that a lot of foreign oil speculators were going to besiege the country with the aim of carrying out explorations.

“Already what is happening in this country is that a lot of land has been taken by foreign speculators who are carrying out exploration in many parts of the country and so with the discovery of oil in Gwembe, the country is likely to witness a high number of foreign firms coming to do exploration,” he said.

He said oil by nature was problematic and therefore it was important for the government to handle the issue with utmost care to avoid unnecessary problems as waa the case in most countries, where are oil deposits, sit like the Middleeast.

Mr. Sinkamba said his party was hopeful that with the discovery of oil in Southern province, the country was going to be able to reduce the cost of importing oil from the Middleeast which would result in the reduction of fuel price.