President Hakainde Hichilema has announced the country’s intentions to build a pipeline to transport oil products from the port of Beira, Mozambique.
Supporting the vision, Mozambican transport minister Mateus Magala said a boom in mineral resources in Zambia means that Mozambique should plan to increase the volume of cargo that it exports through Beira.
Currently imports of petroleum from Mozambique are currently done by road. The development on the cards will support the country’s only oil pipeline from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Ndola, currently being converted from taking crude oil to taking diesel, as the country is closing its inefficient oil refinery.
On the other hand, the government has plans for pipelines from Lobito in Angola and Walvis Bay in Namibia, though neither appear to have got off the drawing board.
Meanwhile Mozambique has a plan to build a fuel depot at Vanduzi, along the existing pipeline to Zimbabwe.
The depot would allow tankers to pick up fuel at Vanduzi, near the crossroads where the east-west road from Beira to Zimbabwe meets the road going north to Tete and then to Malawi and Zambia.
