TANZANIA : TANZANIA Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) has denied rumours that five natural gas producing wells in Mnazi Bay Gas Production field have dried up leading to shortage of power production in the country.
Speaking here on Wednesday shortly after visiting the wells, TPDC Managing Director Mussa Makame termed the rumours as baseless, calling the public to ignore them since all the five wells are still producing the power resource as usual.
“There is no truth over the information that the natural gas producing wells in Mnazi Bay have run dry, not even one of them has stopped production, all the five wells are still functioning well,” he said.
He said the state of production for the natural gas at Mnazi Bay was still at good condition, adding that plans were underway to increase production.
“We are planning to drill two more natural gas producing wells next year here (Mnazi-Bay) to increase production,” he said.
He said the process to drill the wells has already started by planning and setting the budget to facilitate implementation of the plan.
“For now, we are in the season of planning the budget for the 2024 towards drilling the wells come next year,” he said.
Mr Makame said TPDC in collaboration with Maurel and Prom (M&P) and Wentworth Resources are in discussions to finalise the processes of planning the budget.
TPDC Development and Production Manager, Engineer Felix Nanguka said natural gas production at Mnazi-Bay currently stands at 120 million cubic feet per day.
He said some of the gas produced at Mnazi-Bay is distributed to Mtwara to feed the power plants in Mtwara as 117 million cubic feet of natural gas produced is transported to Madimba Natural Gas Processing Plant and later transported to Dar es Salaam for power generation for manufacturing and some is used in cars and homes.
According to TPDC, more than 125 billion cubic feet of natural gas have been extracted from the five wells in Mnazi-Bay in the last 16 years of operation.
Currently, 70 per cent of electricity used in the country is being generated from the natural gas. The country’s natural reserves are estimated at 57 trillion cubic feet with a total annual production of 110 billion cubic feet from three fields of Songo Songo, Mnazi-Bay and Kiliwani North.