Continental Focus, International Reach

BG to Spend Billions in Tanzania

Thursday, March 1, 2012

East Africa will be garnering a significant amount of investment in the coming years based on the recent natural gas discoveries made off the coasts of Tanzania and Mozambique. Numbers like $4 billion and $5 billion keep popping up in news reports on the development of these natural gas discoveries however, one firm says it will spend significantly more than that on the extraction of Tanzania’s resources.

BG Group said it plans to invest up to $20 billion on its natural gas finds in Tanzania according to a report in The Guardian newspaper. The company’s chairman, Robert Wilson was quoted as saying in a meeting with Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete that the country needed to prepare its economy to handle such an amount of money.

"We are planning to invest between $10 billion and $20 billion in the second half of this decade in gas and the Tanzanian economy," Wilson is quoted as saying in the newspaper report.

Last year BG has invested $500 million in gas exploration in the country and it is expected to spend the same amount this year. The big money will come when BG and its partner Ophir Energy start developing the gas.


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