President Emmerson Mnangagwa commissioned a six million litre ethanol storage and handling facility at the National Oil Infrastructure Company (NOIC) in Harare on Tuesday, 07 November, reported ZBC News.
Officially commissioning the facility in Mabvuku, President Mnangagwa revealed that the two ethanol storage and handling facilities were installed with a capacity of three million litres each. He said:
This flagship infrastructure project, which was constructed at a cost of US$7.3 million, consists of storage and handling tanks with a capacity of six million litres as well as attendant ancillary facilities.
As a result, our national storage and handling capacity of ethanol is set to increase by over 100 per cent from 5.2 million litres to about 11.2 million litres. These are spread across the country at Msasa, Feruka and Bulawayo depots.
South Africa and Botswana are eager we facilitate the supply of fuel to them through our infrastructure and another pipeline to supply northern parts of South Africa.
To this end, the Mabvuku depot has not been dedicated to the redelivery of fuel to surrounding markets, resulting in increased efficiency.
Consequently, players in the fuel transport sector servicing the regional countries have largely been loaded out at this key installation.
This has enabled the National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe to achieve a record volume of throughput of fuel pumping on the pipeline of 1.93 billion litres in 2022.
Over and above this, and in line with our Devolution and Decentralisation Policy, NOIC has acquired a depot in Bulawayo to facilitate the bulk dispensing of fuel to clients in the southern region.
President Mnangagwa commended NOIC for completing the first phase of the project to construct holding facilities for 2000 metric tons of Liquefied Petroleum Gas.
He said this has increased the company’s storage capacity of Liquefied Petroleum Gas to over 5000 metric tons, thereby ensuring sufficient buffer stocks and averting stock-outs.
The President also said NOIC and Companhia do Pipeline Mozambique – Zimbabwe Limitada (CPMZ) are synchronising the capacity upgrade of the Feruka Pipeline to increase its capacity from the current 2.19 billion litres of liquid fuel per annum to5 billion litres per annum in 2025.
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