Mozambique: New oil, gas prospects show potential for exploration – minister

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Mozambique: New oil, gas prospects show potential for exploration – minister

11:08 CAT | 07 Jul 2021

File photo: Lusa

Mozambique’s Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Max Tonela, told Lusa that new oil and gas prospecting areas in Mozambique are showing preliminary signs of potential for exploration.

“There are some prospecting [signs] of resource potential,” Max Tonela told Lusa, particularly with regard to data from “analysis and seismic information collected so far.”

Tonela advanced that the concession companies for the new research areas are expected to open the first exploration drill holes by the end of this year and have already made investments greater than those imposed by the contracts signed with the Mozambican government.

“The companies are making [investments] beyond what was planned, in terms of volume of seismic information,” he added.

The limitations imposed within the framework of the Covid-19 prevention and the resulting implications for the mobility of technicians, he continued, prevented further progress in the work.

The licenses to prospect off Mozambique’s central and northern coast are awarded to consortiums involving oil companies ExxonMobil, ENI, Rosneft and Qatar Petroleum, as well as state company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH).

Mozambique already has natural gas reserves that are among the largest in the world, in the Rovuma basin in the north of the country and also has deposits under exploration in Inhambane province, in the south.

The Rovuma project, led by Total, was the largest private investment in Africa until it was suspended in March due to armed attacks in Cabo Delgado, north of the country – some claimed by the ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State.

Source: Lusa