Africa-Press – Mozambique. The partners of the Mozambique LNG Project, who hold the rights to market the natural gas found in Area One of the Rovuma Basin off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, could decide before the end of this year to resume work on building natural gas liquefaction plants on the Afungi Peninsula.
The French oil and gas company, TotalEnergies, which is the operator for Area One, decided in March to halt work and evacuate the construction site following nearby attacks by islamist terrorists.
Some commentators suggested that the work might never resume. However, on Wednesday, following a meeting between President Filipe Nyusi and [Hirotatsu Fujiwara] the vice-president of one of the partners, Mitsui, the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Max Tonela, said that there could be an imminent decision to restart work.
According to Tonela, “we have recently held meetings with Total, we have had meetings with ENI, and today we met Galp [CEO Andy Brown] and Mitsui; and the outlook is that before the end of the year we are going to have all the conditions for us to sit down and decide to resume the project”.
Total halted construction work and pulled many of its staff out of Afungi following a terrorist attack on 1 January on the resettlement town of Quitunda, a new town built to house people resettled from the areas of the Peninsula where the gas liquefaction plants will be built. In March, it planned to resume work but terrorists attacked the town of Palma which lies 15 kilometres from Afungi and within the 25-kilometre security perimeter. During the attack, over 30,000 residents fled the onslaught and dozens of local people and foreign contractors were murdered.
However, since then the Mozambican armed forces together with their allies from the Southern Africa Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) and Rwanda have continued to make progress in returning security to the areas affected by terrorist attacks.
Tonela stressed, “we want a situation of sustainable security that will allow all the planned investment projects in that area to take place”.
TotalEnergies is the operator of the Mozambique LNG project and has a 26.5 per cent holding. The other members of the consortium are Mitsui of Japan (20 per cent), PTTEP of Thailand (8.5 per cent), the Indian companies ONGC Videsh Rovuma Limited, Beas Rovuma Energy Mozambique Limited and BPRL Ventures Mozambique B.V. (10 per cent each), and Mozambique’s own National Hydrocarbon Company, ENH (15 per cent).
The consortium is investing about 23 billion US dollars in constructing two LNG trains with the capacity to produce 13 million tonnes of LNG a year. The gas will come from the Atum and Golfinho fields in Area One.
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