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Stanford Chiwanga

ON the 26th of September Zimbabwe woke up to news that an Australian company Invictus Energy Limited had confirmed the potential of oil in Muzarabani, Cabora Bassa Basin in Mashonaland Central Province 25 years after Mobil carried similar studies in the area and left.

The Cabora Bassa Project encompasses the Muzarabani Prospect, a potentially trillion-cubic-feet-plus conventional gas-condensate asset which is the largest, undrilled seismically defined structure onshore Africa.

In a statement Invictus Energy said: “Preliminary gravity data reprocessing confirms shallow basement trend associated with Muzarabani anticline and identifies further leads Invictus Energy Limited (“Invictus” or “the Company”), is pleased to announce that the ongoing basin modelling study (the “Basin Model”) and geochemical studies confirm the oil potential of the Cahora Bassa Basin.”

The statement quoted Invictus Energy Managing Director Scott Macmillan saying: “The results of our ongoing technical work are extremely encouraging and is enhancing our understanding of the potential of our acreage in the Cabora Bassa Basin. The basin modelling and source rock characterisation is one of the key pieces of work that significantly derisks the charge timing and availability to the Muzarabani Prospect and the wider basin as well. In addition, new processing techniques applied to the raw datasets that were not available 25 years ago are beginning to show additional structural detail in the basin that was not previously possible as indicated by the preliminary gravity processing results.”

“Our technical work is continuing on this exciting project and we look forward to updating the market on our progress in due course as our work programme delivers results.”

It said conclusions from previous source rock characterisation and basin modelling studies undertaken by Mobil more than 25 years ago “have been superseded with new geological understanding derived from updated industry classification of source rock types and basin modelling methods”.

Invictus Energy further noted that the deep lacustrine (lake) source rock type in the Cabora Bassa Basin was not widely regarded 25 years ago as having significant oil generating potential.

It noted that recent multi-billion barrel oil discoveries in onshore African rift basins like the Albertine Graben in Uganda and the Lokichar Basin in Kenya were derived from deep lacustrine source rocks contained in the basins. These significant oil discoveries in these basins and elsewhere which are derived from lacustrine source rocks has resulted in the reclassification of their potential as rich oil and wet-gas generating source rocks, it said. The company said it is in the process of acquiring additional outcrop source rock samples over the basin wide area to further enhance the geochemical dataset.

“The Basin Model further demonstrates a reduction in the key risk previously identified by Mobil relating to the timing of hydrocarbon charge and trap formation. The previous basin modelling work by Mobil concluded that the Upper Angwa source rock may have generated and expelled hydrocarbons prior to the formation of the trap (Muzarabani anticline / 4-way dip closure)

“The new Basin Model concludes that the source rock within the primary target of the Muzarabani Prospect, the Upper Angwa Alternations Member, is within the oil and wet gas window present day on the flanks of the basin, and has undergone active hydrocarbon generation post trap formation from the source kitchen within the Muzarabani fetch area,” said the company.

It added that the Basin Model had also implemented updated understanding of the thermal regime and burial depth history which is a key control of the hydrocarbon phase generation (oil or gas) for this source rock type.

“Previous Mobil work assumed the strict and now outdated ‘McKenzie Model’, which results in an overestimation of the regional thermal gradient. This therefore led to higher modelled maturities and the conclusion that the hydrocarbon phase was more likely to be gas than oil. However, the current Basin Model demonstrates that the Muzarabani Prospect may lie within both the light oil generation window (at the crest of the structure) and the wet-gas generation window (on the flanks of the structure) due to size of the structure and significant vertical relief.”

This news greatly pleased Zimbabweans as oil is seen as a potential economic game changer and that is true. But what the article did not say was that oil is a gift and a curse. If not handled with care it could lead to the destruction of the environment.

“The very presence of oil and gas resources within developing countries exacerbates the risk of environmental degradation as the need to fix the economy leads to extraction without care for tomorrow. So Zimbabwe needs to balance that equation otherwise the environment will be destroyed, “said Dr Cornelius Ncube, the chairperson of the Department of Development Studies at Lupane State University.

Zimbabwe has been hit by an acute shortage of fuel, the production or the trade of oil will not only solve the energy crisis and fuel the economy, these activities could cause severe damage to the environment, either knowingly or unintentionally. Oil production and transportation can disrupt the human population, and the animal and fish life of the region. Oil waste dumping, production pollution, and spills wreak havoc on the surrounding wildlife and habitat. It threatens the extinction of several plants, and has already harmed many land, air, and sea animal and plant species.

Runoffs from petroleum processing and petrochemical plants could see tons of toxic wastes being dumped into nearby waters. Gas and oil pipelines in countries such as Nigeria have stanched many creeks and rivers, swamping prime pastures and cropland.

The environmental damage that is a result of oil retraction and production could also directly affect human life in Zimbabwe. Damage can include pollution of water resources and contamination of the soil. Humans are effected by environmental devastation because it is damaging to vegetation, livestock, and to the health of the human body itself.

There is a likelihood that oil production in Zimbabwe could see most economic activities being driven by oil just like in Ecuador.  50 percent of Ecuador’s national budget is funded by oil earnings and continued oil exploration and production is thought to be necessary to ensure the country’s wellbeing. Dependence on oil has caused damaging consequences to indigenous tribes living in the Amazon region and to the environment in the eastern part of the country. The Indians of Ecuador, located in the Amazon region of Oriente, have joined forces for the past 20 years to resist oil exploration and demand rights to their ancestral lands. Many of the indigenous tribes in the Amazon region that once numbered in the thousands have been reduced to the hundreds as a result of the pollution generated by oil exploration and other assaults. Water contamination has led to increased risks of cancer, abortion, dermatitis, fungal infection, headaches, and nausea. Their drinking, bathing, and fishing water contain toxins much higher than the safety limits set by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The oil companies that drilled in the rain forest were responsible for “felling thousands of acres of trees, dynamiting the earth, spilling vast amounts of oil, destroying habitats, and fouling rivers.” Fish have died from water pollution and the game the tribes once hunted have retreated deeper into the jungle as a result of the deforestation. The Rainforest Action Network found that Texaco alone spilled 17 million gallons of crude oil, abandoned hundreds of unlined toxic waste ponds, and constructed oil roads that opened more than 2.5 million acres of the forest to colonization. As a result, Ecuador’s rain forests are being cut down by oil companies and settlers at a rate of approximately 340,000 hectares a year. The wood is used for construction, roads, fuel, and furniture.

The exploration for oil has created numerous environmental problems of all types in the Amazon region. The Amazon basin in Ecuador has the greatest number of plant species of any South American country. The Sierra highlands have been almost completely deforested. Also, the Oriente is a species rich jungle with numerous mammals in danger of extinction. Oil that was placed on roads to cut dust has flowed into rivers. Oil waste in the past was placed in holes in the ground that contaminated the forests and the rivers. Ecuadorian officials estimate that ruptures to the major pipeline alone have discharged more than 16.8 million gallons of oil into the Amazon over the past eighteen years (compared to the 10.8 million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill).

Closer to home in Nigeria, oil production has had severe environmental and human consequences for the indigenous peoples who inhabit the areas surrounding oil extraction. Nigeria’s export of 12 million barrels of oil a day comes from 12 percent of the country’s land, and indigenous minority communities in these areas receive no economic benefits. Indigenous groups are actually further impoverished due to environmental degradation from oil production and the lack of adequate regulations on multinational companies, as they become more vulnerable to food shortages, health hazards, loss of land, pollution, forced migration and unemployment.

The social and environmental costs of oil production in Nigeria have been extensive. They include destruction of wildlife and biodiversity, loss of fertile soil, pollution of air and drinking water, degradation of farmland and damage to aquatic ecosystems, all of which have caused serious health problems for the inhabitants of areas surrounding oil production. Pollution is caused by gas flaring, above ground pipeline leakage, oil waste dumping and oil spills. Approximately 75 percent of gas produced is flared annually causing considerable ecological and physical damage to other resources such as land and soil, water and vegetation. Gas flares, which are often times situated close to villages, produce soot which is deposited on building roofs of neighboring villages. Whenever it rains, the soot is washed off and the black ink-like water running from the roofs is believed to contain chemicals which adversely affect the fertility of the soil. Gas pipelines have also caused irreparable damage to lands once used for agricultural purposes. These pipes should be buried to reduce risk of fracture and spillage. However, they are often laid above ground and run directly through villages, where oil leaks have rendered the land economically useless.

Oil spills and the dumping oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. According to an independent record of Shell’s spills from 1982 to 1992, close to two million gallons were spilt from the company’s Nigerian operations in 27 separate incidences. Of the number of spills recorded from Shell – a company which operates in more than 100 countries – 40 percent were in Nigeria.

Shell is also being accused of engaging in “widespread ecological disturbances, including explosions from seismic surveys, pollution from pipe-line leaks, blowouts, drilling fluids and refinery effluents, and land alienation and disruption of the natural terrain from construction of industry infrastructure and installations”. For example, oil spill contamination of the top soil has rendered the soil in the surrounding areas “unsuitable for plant growth by reducing the availability of nutrients or by increasing toxic contents in the soil”. Gas flaring, on the other hand, “has been associated with reduced crop yield and plant growth on nearby farms, and disruption of wildlife in the immediate vicinity”. Shell and other oil companies have developed an easy and inexpensive way to deal with by-products from oil drilling: “indiscriminate dumping”.

The Minister of Energy and Power Development Joram Gumbo said the government will do all in its power to minimize the damage to the environment.

“We have EMA (Environmental Management Agency) and they will ensure that there is minimum damage to the environment. We will also do case studies of other countries and see how they protect their environment. But we won’t do this alone, we will be assisted by the oil companies. Throughout the world environmental protection has moved up the agenda inside every major oil company. New technologies also n that drilling can be done with minimal impact on the environment. Regulations will obviously need to be tightened so that companies avoid fines and to lose their reputations,” said Minister Gumbo.

So what must Zimbabwe do? As much as it will explore oil it must also pursue renewable energy. Solar photovoltaic and wind power are rapidly getting cheaper and more abundant – so much so that they are on track to entirely supplant fossil fuels worldwide within two decades, with the time frame depending mostly on politics.

The good thing is that Zimbabwe wants to embrace renewable energy and the government is funding solar energy projects so politics will not be much of a problem.

“Minister Gumbo said: “Renewable energy sources will play an increasingly vital role in the mix of power generation over the next century. The demands on these alternative energy sources are inordinate – they will need to not only keep up with the increasing population growth, but needs to go beyond these demands by contributing to the replacement of fossil fuel energy production in order to meet future energy needs and consider the natural environment.

“As a government we are aware of that that is why we are putting up solar plants throughout the country. That is why we have tenders for solar energy projects. But we cannot abandon oil if it is there. We must explore and harvest it with much care for the environment of course.”