Courtesy of The Africa Report, a look at how successful drilling for oil, gas and helium in northeast Zimbabwe shows that the country is open for business:

The company said in May that light oil, gas condensate, and helium were confirmed at Mukuyu-1, which forms part of the 80% owned Cabora Bassa project in northeastern Zimbabwe. The finding, about 250km from Harare, cannot yet be classed as a “discovery”, with fluid samples needed first.

The company estimates that the prospect may hold 20 trillion cubic feet of gas and 5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which would make it one of Africa’s largest onshore oil and gas prospects. ExxonMobil previously explored the area in the 1990s. Macmillan, who is from Zimbabwe, took over the legacy data from that exploration when he bought the project in 2018.

The region wasn’t short of power in the 1990s, and there now exist much greater opportunities to monetise gas production for Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries, Macmillan says. Mining and fertilisers are among the industries in Zimbabwe which can benefit, and he also hopes to supply the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).

Invictus is based in Perth and trades on the Australian Stock Exchange. The company has a local Zimbabwean partner, One Gas Resources, and local institutional shareholders including Mangwana Capital. BNP Paribas and Citicorp also have stakes, and Invictus plans to bring in an industrial partner to help with development. Drilling at the Mukuyu-2 project is due in the third quarter of this year, and Macmillan hopes to have a pilot involving small-scale gas-to-power production running within two to three years.

Macmillan’s background in the country gives him advantages. “I know the real versus the perceived risks” of operating in Zimbabwe, he says. The “overwhelming” fear that investors have is that of nationalisation due to the land reforms carried out by former President Robert Mugabe.

Zimbabwe under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took office in November 2017, has recognised that Mugabe’s investment laws were “draconian”, Macmillan says. Tax incentives for foreign investors and the creation of special economic zones show that the government “is serious about learning from past mistakes,” he says.

Macmillan’s family has a long history in Zimbabwe. His great-grandfather emigrated to Rhodesia from Scotland in 1897 and started a laundry business in Bulawayo. He would collect people’s laundry in a wheelbarrow and then deliver it back to them. The business grew on the back of the former Rhodesia’s cotton plantations to include bleaching, dry cleaning, and dyeing. It employed about 600 people at its peak in the 1990s and still operates today in its original Bulawayo building.

Today, the perception persists that investors can’t get their money out of the country, but that’s “just not the case,” Macmillan says. He points to Zimplats, which mines platinum group metals and trades on the Australian stock market, and Caledonia, a gold miner listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), as success stories.

The fact that Invictus has been able to drill the country’s first-ever well in a remote part of the country having only taken over the project in 2018, despite the interruption of Covid-19, shows that the business environment is workable, he adds.

The real risks in Zimbabwe, Macmillan says, revolve around central bank policy, inflation, and changes to retention rates, or the share of domestic and export sales that companies are allowed to keep in foreign currency.

Changes to retention rates in the past came without consulting the industry and “sowed the seeds of uncertainty,” he says. Being made to convert more money into domestic currency would be a heavy blow for any investor: the IMF projects Zimbabwe’s 2023 consumer price inflation at 172%.