Govt finalizes local content policy for gas sector

Dar es Salaam. The government has said that it’s currently in the last stages of compiling regulations for the local content policy for the gas and oil industry especially on the construction of a Liquidified Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Lindi.

The deputy minister Ministry of Energy and Minerals Dr Medard Kalemani said this on the sidelines of a local content meeting on the natural gas industry in Tanzania under the theme “Using finite resources to achieve sustainable development.”

The deputy minister stressed that the government was taking the local content issue seriously to ensure Tanzanians benefit from the resource.

He said, “We expect the regulations to come into effect next year and work parallelly with the content policy to favour Tanzanians,” he said.

He said construction is expected to take at least 20,000 hectares of land whereby 18,000 will be for the construction of industrial parks and the remaining 2,700 for the LNG plant at the cost of $30billion.

“The local content policy stresses employment of Tanzanians whereby international oil companies are expected to allocate 25 per cent of the employment opportunities to Tanzanians as well as procuring equipment  found in the country locally,” he said.

In view of this, he said that the government was currently sending at least 20 Tanzanians outside the country to build capacity in the gas industry.