Mozambique LNG ready to resume operations, says Total Energies CEO

Maputo, 1 Oct (AIM) – Patrick Pouyanne, the CEO of the French oil and gas company, Total Energies, which heads the Mozambique LNG Project, located on the Afungi peninsula, in Palma district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, has announced that the company is ready to resume operations and that the production of LNG (liquefied natural gas) may start in 2029.

The LNG project, which is budgeted at around 20 billion dollars, has been suspended since 2021, when Total Energies declared a state of “force majeure” following a major terrorist attack against Palma town.

It was hoped that the project, known simply as “Mozambique LNG”, in which TotalEnergies holds a 26.5 percent operating stake, would make Mozambique one of the major LNG producers in the world. But the jihadist raid of 2021 brought all work on the project to a halt.

According to Pouyanne, cited by the Bloomberg agency, after he met a group of investors on Monday in New York, “everything is ready, in fact we are remobilizing on the ground. The LNG production should start in 2029.”

“The resumption of the project is currently being assessed, and we’ll move, I think, very quickly”, he added.

He explained that Total Energies and the Mozambican government still need to approve an updated development plan and budget to account for the impact of the force majeure, which is still in place.

The Mozambique LNG Project began with the discovery of over 65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin, which led TotalEnergies and its partners to take a Final Investment Decision in 2019.

The project includes two gas liquefaction units to be built on the Afungi Peninsula, with an expansion capacity of up to 43 million tonnes of LNG per year.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (304)