Vitol Group is supplying diesel to Zambia via exclusive access to a pipeline that lasts through September, in an emergency arrangement the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged authorities to end.
The government in April froze open access to the conduit that connects Zambia’s copper-rich region to a port in neighboring Tanzania, saying it would ensure supply security, without identifying which company had taken over the operation.
Speaking on the sidelines of a recent conference in Cape Town, South Africa, permanent secretary of Zambia’s Energy Ministry, Ephraim Munshifwa, as cited by Bloomberg, that Vitol is now the sole provider via the Tazama pipeline.
In 2022, Zambia granted trading house Vitol and its local partner Agro-Fuel Investments a monopoly on the line, leading to calls from the IMF to allow open access. The government ultimately did so, which the Washington-based lender said halved the premium on fuel prices.
Then, after the Iran war upended oil markets, the open access system was again frozen this year, with Vitol getting exclusive use. The IMF last month said it had urged the Zambian government to restore the open access framework and publish the terms of the emergency arrangements.
Vitol is supplying diesel to Zambia via exclusive access to a pipeline that lasts through September, in an emergency arrangement the International Monetary Fund has urged authorities to end. Image by Nabil Kamara via iStock Vitol declined to comment.
Though Zambia, a landlocked nation in Southern Africa, produces no oil itself, its mining industry is Africa’s second-biggest copper producer, accounting for about one-third of total diesel demand. The Tazama pipeline covers about 60 percent of imports, with the rest coming by road.
