Government-owned Botswana Oil has invited private investors to take part in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) tender in order to construct a storage facility for up to 171 million litres of oil, as the country seeks to bolster its reserves.

According to a tender document, Botswana Oil is aiming to attract bids from businesses to design, construct, finance and operate the Tshele Hills strategic oil storage depot, Reuters news agency reports, which after two decades will be transferred to the government.

The depot, to be located around 40 kilometres north of Botswana’s capital Gaborone, would increase the country's strategic oil reserves from the current 18 days to 60 days.

"The project entails construction and financing of the tank farm, gantries and associated work as well as financing the first fills, culminating in a fully functioning depot," Botswana Oil stated, going on to add that submissions of bids would close on 26th October. 

Botswana Oil, which is currently acquiring a $2.5 billion Coal to Liquids (CTL) plant via the same Public-Private Partnership model, didn’t unveil the cost of the construction of the storage facility. However, the firm has previously estimated the project’s capital cost to exceed 3 billion pula ($229 million).

The Reuters report goes on to say that the oil depot and the aforementioned Coal to Liquids plant are included within the initial 15 national mega projects set aside for private funding via the upcoming National Development Plan (NDP12), which gets underway in April 2023, as the government seeks to reduce the burden of funding major infrastructure projects from its budget.