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Geothermal Power Tanzania moving forward on initial development

Geothermal Power Tanzania moving forward on initial development Mbeya region, Tanzania, Africa (source: flickr/ Sara&Joachim, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 25 Jun 2013

Geothermal Power Tanzania is pushing forward with the development of a geothermal power project in the southwest of Tanzania, with the drilling of initial two wells and plans for a small wellhead unit to produce power early on.

In an interview last year, Horst Kreuter founder and CEO of GeoT(thermal Enginnering) from Germany, provided details about his companies activities in Africa.

Now it seems like the company is pushing forward with its Tanzanian activities with a planned investment of up to $350 million to drill steam fields. Geothermal Power Tanzania Ltd, so news from Bloomberg, is planning to develop geothermal power generation facilities of up to 140 MW of installed capacity by 2018.

Earlier this year, the company started drilling for two wells on site of the project in the Mbeya region in the southwest of Tanzania.

While development in neighbouring Kenya has taken 20 to 30 years, Tanzania is seeing a fast track geothermal development, so the company’s chairman Graeme Robertson. As other countries in the region, Tanzania is faced with power outages and the need to diversify its energy supply and an increasing power demand. The country plans to extend its power generation capacity by more than 60% from its capacity of 1,064 MW in 2010.

Geothermal Power Tanzania owns six exploration licenses in the country and plans initial small development to start with.

This could mean that the company installs small wellhead units and starts producing electricity as early as next year.

After that the company plans build out of the steam field adding additional 5 to 10 MW within the next two years and – later on – 25 MW units.

Funding is sought from international lenders such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, according to Bloomberg.

Geothermal Power Tanzania Ltd. is majority owned by Geothermal Power Ltd., a Mauritius based holding company. About 30% of the company is held by the National Development Corp. of Tanzania and Interstate Mining & Minerals Ltd., also a Tanzanian company.

Source: Bloomberg