DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's energy regulator said Tuesday plans were afoot to connect 42 companies to gas to ensure adequate supply of energy in a country with erratic power supply.
Kapuulya Musomba, the Acting Managing Director of the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC), said priority will be given to companies situated in industrial parks.
"We have enough gas to connect to as many companies as possible but we have decided to start with 42 at the moment due to financial constraints and poor infrastructure,"Musomba told a news conference in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
"Connecting gas to companies needs heavy investments," he said, adding that currently there were about 81 new companies that needed to be connected to gas for energy.
"We currently use only 10 percent of the gas we produce countrywide and the industries which need gas are many," said Musomba.
Musomba said a major drawback facing the connection of gas to industries was poor planning of cities.
"In order to reach some companies we have to demolish some of the residential and commercial houses," he said.
Medard Kalemani, the Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals, said the government was in the process of establishing a gas master plan aimed at creating provisions for both domestic and industrial gas use.
Kalemani said the master plan will also help investors to understand how to access gas for powering their industries.
Early this month, the minister of state in the vice-president's office responsible for environment, January Makamba, directed public institutions, including the army, schools, hospitals and high learning institutions to switch to using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to reduce deforestation through the use of charcoal.
Makamba said the move will help reduce the effects of environmental degradations caused by unscrupulous felling of trees for charcoal.
"We reached this decision after we had realized that the government was the major consumer of forest products leading to deforestation," said Makamba.
The east African nation's total estimated recoverable natural gas reserves are more than 57 trillion cubic feet.
