The plot, situated in John Ovenstone Street, used to serve as the old Walvis Bay Municipal Storage in the heavy industrial area zone of the coastal town.

Its locality, says Mines and Energy Minister Isak Katali, is a perfect area to set up the Namcor storage facility, which is meant to improve the supply of petroleum products to the country.

New Namcor Board Chairman Johannes Gawaxab joined Katali on a trip to the coast.

Now that the area has been secured, it is government’s intention “to start as soon as possible” with the construction of the facility, said a buoyant Katali.

He said Namibia consumes over 900 million litres of petroleum-related products per year – but only has a storage capacity of 80 million litres – most of which is owned by the private sector.

It is envisaged that the Namcor storage tanks will push the figure to 150 million litres at Walvis Bay alone – whilst Namcor stressed its desire to set up storage facilities further inland, with Keetmanshoop, Oshakati, Windhoek and Otjiwarongo being mooted as hosts to such facilities.

Although Namibia has not been exposed to harsh shortages of petroleum in the last 21 years – other than the periodically lower supply in the northern parts of the country every festive season due to an influx of people “preparedness is always better than a cure” says Katali.

His views were echoed by Board Chairman Gawaxab – who said that as a growing economy, Namibia needs to preserve a constant and uninterrupted supply of fuel and other essentials to protect its investments and ensure that in the case of oil crises the economy does not come to a halt.

“Oil is exposed to many other factors on the international scene and volatility can always be expected, but we cannot wait for that to happen whilst we must do everything in our power to protect our economy against such exposure”.