Elephants push Mozambique oil refinery to new site
Tue Aug 11, 11:05 am ET

MAPUTO (AFP) – Mozambican energy firm Oilmoz has moved the site for a planned eight billion dollar (5.6 billion euro) oil refinery to avoid putting a nearby elephant reserve at risk, the chairman said Tuesday.

The proposed site for the 350,000-barrel-a-day refinery has been shifted from the southernmost district of Matutuine, home of the Maputo Elephant Reserve, to Marracuene, about 125 kilometres (75 miles) to the north.

"The zone of Matutuine is a sensitive zone from the environmental point of view. There's an elephant reserve and it's also a zone of biodiversity," chairman Leonardo Simao told AFP.

Simao, a former foreign minister of Mozambique, said the change of site will not slow construction on the refinery, which is scheduled to open in 2014.

Mozambique's only oil refinery closed 24 years ago, leaving the impoverished country dependent on fuel imports.

Oilmoz in March received 50 million dollars from investors to begin environmental impact and feasibility studies for the project in partnership with Shell Global Solutions, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell.

Oilmoz plans to submit the project for final government approval early next year, Simao said.

Oilmoz says the facility will also include a 500-megawatt power plant, a petrochemical derivatives plant, a wastewater treatment unit, a fuel storage facility, a hospital and a housing project.

Mozambique has been working to rebuild its elephant population since a 16-year-civil war that decimated its wildlife ended in 1992.

Loki Osborn, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, has called the Maputo Elephant Reserve "potentially one of Mozambique's most important natural assets."

The park is home to some 300 elephants.

Nice