By Sully Manope, in Windhoek
The Government of Zanzibar (the semi-autonomous region in Tanzania), has added two new onshore blocks to the offerings in the on-going bid round.
Earlier in March, 2024, the country had offered eight offshore blocks to international investors in its first hydrocarbon lease sale. The submission of bids for those offshore blocks will end in December, 2024.
Submissions of bids for the new onshore blocks will continue until June 2025.
The size of the eight offshore blocks total 31,883 km².
The new blocks onshore blocks are formed from the Pemba-Zanzibar block, which was returned to Zanzibar after the expiration of the license held by RAKGAS, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil and gas company.
“The former Pemba-Zanzibar block has been divided into two: Zanzibar Block 1, covering 6,572 square kilometers, and Zanzibar Block 2, covering 6,242 square kilometers,” the government said in a statement.
RAKGAS acquired 717 line kilometres of two dimensional ( 2D) seismic data onshore and 2,815.6 line kilometres of 2D seismic data offshore from November 2017 to February 2019. It also acquired 244 line kilometres in the transition zone in the same period, making a total of 3,776.6 line kilometers. The interpretation of these surveys indicated the potential presence of rock formations with estimated oil and natural gas reserves of approximately 3.8Trillion cubic feet in the Pemba-Zanzibar Block. According to the Zanzibar Development Plan (ZADEP 2021-2026), the archipelago is committed to the sustainable exploitation of Oil and Gas (O&G) in both onshore and offshore Zanzibar.
