Mozambique: Total reduces workers at huge gas project – Lusa

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Mozambique: Total reduces workers at huge gas project – Lusa

6:23 CAT | 28 Jan 2021

File photo: CDD Moçambique

Total oil company continues to reduce its staff from the works on the natural gas megaproject in Cabo Delgado, a month after attacks on the project in that region of northern Mozambique, the company said on Thursday in response to questions raised by Lusa.

“Faced with the evolution of the security situation in Cabo Delgado province and Palma district,” the Area 1 – Mozambique LNG consortium led by Total decided to “reduce the staff at the project site in Afungi,” it said.

“The demobilisation process is underway in an organised manner and in accordance with the established protocols,” the company said today, after being asked whether there had been a resumption of activities.

A first announcement of a reduction was made in December, just after an attack five kilometres from the site.

One month later Total “is following the security situation in northern Mozambique with the greatest attention, together with the Mozambican authorities.

The company said it was paying attention to “all the necessary measures to ensure the safety and protection of its staff and subcontractors.

The situation led French oil company president Patrick Pouyanné to travel to Maputo and meet with Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on 18 January.

The meeting was kept under the strictest discretion and agreement was only announced on further security enhancement around the natural gas venture in Cabo Delgado after another review of the complex’s protection terms that had been made on 24 August 2020.

Costing between €20 and €25 billion, Total’s gas extraction megaproject is the largest private investment in Africa, supported by several international financial institutions, and includes the construction of industrial units and a new city between Palma and the Afungi peninsula.

The first export of liquefied gas is planned for 2024.

Mozambique’s main hopes for economic growth in the next decade lie in the project, after the other major gas exploration project (Area 4), led by Exxon Mobil and ENI, has been postponed – this Area 4 consortium was to be responsible for exploiting a smaller quantity of gas through a floating platform from 2022 onwards.

The armed violence in Cabo Delgado is causing a humanitarian crisis with more than 2,000 deaths and 560,000 displaced people, without housing or food, mainly concentrated in the provincial capital, Pemba.

Some of the insurgent incursions have been claimed by the ‘jihadist’ Islamic state group since 2019.

Source: Lusa