Madagascar's Council of Ministers approved a road maintenance demonstration project on 2 June 2026, centred on the use of Bemolanga bituminous sandstone in road construction works in the Morafenobe district. The initiative is backed by the Road Fund and marks a practical step toward domestic utilisation of one of the country's known hydrocarbon-bearing formations.
The project is being jointly led by OMNIS (Office des Mines Nationales et des Industries Stratégiques), the National Laboratory for Public Works and Building (LNTPB), and the Ministry of Public Works, according to the announcement from OMNIS. The collaboration signals a government-backed push to commercialise Bemolanga's bituminous sandstone resources — not as a conventional crude oil feedstock, but as a construction-grade bitumen material for the country's road network.
Bemolanga is one of Madagascar's most prominent heavy hydrocarbon deposits, containing significant volumes of oil shale and bituminous sandstone. The decision to prioritise a road-application demonstration rather than extraction for energy production reflects a pragmatic, phased approach to monetising the resource under current infrastructure and financing constraints. Ministerial approval of the project suggests the government views this pathway as lower-risk and more immediately deliverable than pursuing full-scale upstream development.
The Road Fund's involvement as a financial backer is significant: it institutionalises the demand side of the equation, linking the Bemolanga resource directly to a funded, recurring national infrastructure budget. A successful demonstration in Morafenobe could open the door to broader procurement of Bemolanga-derived bitumen across Madagascar's road maintenance programme, giving the project a potential scale-up trajectory beyond its current pilot scope. The LNTPB's participation also suggests that technical validation and materials-testing standards will be integrated from the outset, which is a prerequisite for any wider national rollout.