Mozambique: Government guarantees “total commitment” to restoring security in meetings with Total – Lusa

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Mozambique: Government guarantees “total commitment” to restoring security in meetings with Total – Lusa

3:10 CAT | 03 May 2021

The Total-led project, which was due to start production in 2024, is estimated to be worth €20 billion - the largest private investment underway in Africa.

During meetings in Maputo on Friday, the Mozambican government assured Total of its “total commitment” to restoring security in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, facilitating the resumption of the oil company’s gas project, a government source said on Saturday.

“We conveyed to Total our total commitment to the restoration of security conditions favourable to the resumption of all projects suspended due to the action of the terrorists in Cabo Delgado,” the source said, without further elaboration.

Participants at the meeting between Mozambique’s Ministers of Mineral Resources and Energy, Max Tonela, and of Defence, Jaime Neto, and Total’s head of Exploration and Production, Arnaud Breuillac, “expressed harmony and confidence in relation to the viability of gas projects in the Rovuma basin”.

On Monday, Total claimed “force majeure” justification for removing all personnel from northern Mozambique after the armed violence there escalated on March 24 with an attack on the village of Palma.

The Total-led project, scheduled to start production in 2024 and estimated to be worth about €20 billion, is the largest private investment underway in Africa. It underpins a good part of Mozambique’s development expectations over the next decade.

Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has already caused more than 2,500 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and displaced 714,000 people, according to the Mozambican government.

Source: Lusa