A new era dawns for oil

Botswana Oil’s broad mandate includes securing the supply of the precious commodity, ensuring greater industry access to citizens and managing the strategic reserves. The weight on Botswana Oil’s shoulders is tremendous and historic in that for the first time a taxpayer-funded entity is carving a regulatory and participatory niche in the traditionally exclusive oil sector.

From independence, the oil sector has been the near-exclusive preserve of multinational oil corporations at marketing and distribution level, with citizen participation limited to ground-level ownership of mostly rural filling stations.