Mozambique: TotalEnergies to resume construction, gas exploration by end-year – CEO

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Mozambique: TotalEnergies to resume construction, gas exploration by end-year – CEO

2:30 CAT | 07 Feb 2024

File photo: O País

The CEO of France-based oil company TotalEnergies said on Wednesday that he expects the multinational to restart construction works and natural gas exploration work in northern Mozambique by the end of this year, pledging to monitor the situation on the ground permanently.

“We are constantly monitoring the situation on the ground, the civilian population is already back on the ground, there is normality, despite some incidents related to the situation in Gaza, which has reactivated some cells in many countries, and we have engineering issues to resolve, but I hope to restart the project by the end of the year,” said the Total CEO, Patrick Pouyanné.

Responding to a question about Mozambique, at the end of the presentation of the 2023 results, Pouyanné added: “What I don’t want to happen is to decide to turn people around and then have to force them out again, that would be very complex.”

TotalEnergies suspended its project to build a natural gas production and export plant in Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, following the worsening security situation in the region in March 2021.

“We have made progress with the suppliers, with the different contractors, including on the cost side, they have heard our message, they want to reactivate the project, and we are now in the process of reactivating the global financing, which should happen in the coming months,” he added.

Earlier, during the presentation of results, Pouyanné had already said that the company “is not far from having everything ready” to restart work on natural gas exploration in northern Mozambique.

“The last part is the refinancing of the project, which was suspended, let’s say, when there were the events” of terrorism that forced the suspension of the project, he added.

For TotalEnergies, what is needed now is to “reactivate the financial institutions around the world, and then when that is done we will restart the project,” he concluded.

Mozambique has three development projects approved to exploit the natural gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified as one of the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.

Two of these projects are larger and involve channelling the gas from the seabed to land, cooling it in a factory to export it by sea in a liquid state.

The largest is led by TotalEnergies (as leader of the Area 1 consortium) and work progressed until it was suspended indefinitely after an armed attack on Palma in March 2021, when the company declared that it would only resume work when the area was safe.

The other is the still unannounced investment led by ExxonMobil and Eni (by the Area 4 consortium).

A third completed and smaller project also belongs to the Area 4 consortium and consists of a floating platform for capturing and processing gas for export, directly at sea, which started up in November 2022.

The insurgency brought a military response from July 2021 onwards, with support from forces from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts near the gas projects, but new waves of attacks have since emerged to the south of the region and in neighbouring Nampula province.

Source: Lusa