Maputo, Aug. 15, 2024 (Lusa) - Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi said on Thursday that US oil company ExxonMobil plans to make a decision on the natural gas extraction project in northern Mozambique only in 2026.
The head of state, who received the chairman of ExxonMobil Upstream, Liam Mallon, in Maputo today, explained that he had discussed with the head of the US oil company ‘progress on the LNG project’ in the Rovuma basin in Cabo Delgado in the north of the country.
‘We focused our discussions on the initial engineering phase of the project, now with plans to finalise approvals and make the Final Investment Decision by 2026. With significant progress, it has been reiterated that this project will be one of the least polluting initiatives with all the potential for a promising future in the liquefied natural gas sector,’ explained Nyusi in a message on his official Facebook account.
ExxonMobil's general manager in Mozambique, Arne Gibbsda, had said on 3 May that a decision on the investment could be made by the end of 2025.
‘We're optimistic, we're moving forward, but we recognise that there are still challenges,’ he said in statements quoted at the time by the Bloomberg financial information agency, in which he pointed to the Final Investment Decision not being made until the end of next year, fulfilling the forecast made in July of starting in 2025.
Gibbs' statements came in the same week that the president of Mozambique said that funding is no reason to delay the implementation of the natural gas megaprojects led by France's TotalEnergies and the US's ExxonMobil.
‘It's fundamental [to go ahead with the projects] because it can't be a problem of financial decisions now associated with the terrorist situation. This project already existed. It's old. That means there was clarity in its execution. It can't run aground for this reason, let's look for others,’ criticised Filipe Nyusi during the 10th edition of the Mozambique Mining and Energy Conference and Exhibition.
Specifically, he called on the concessionaires of Area 1, led by TotalEnergies, to ‘accelerate the development of the resumption of onshore projects’ because of the ‘gradual promising stability’ on the Afungi peninsula, in the district of Palma, Cabo Delgado, and that in Area 4, onshore, led by ExxonMobil, ‘the process leading to the Final Investment Decision should be accelerated, with the necessary adjustments to the Development Plan approved in 2018’.
In the same speech at the conference, the head of state said that the ‘delay’ in realising this type of project ‘causes problems’ because the ‘expectations of the countries are enormous’ and ‘people think that part of their problem may have been solved’.
In statements quoted by Bloomberg, Arne Gibbs confirmed that the oil company had completed the preliminary engineering and design work for the 18 million tonnes per year project in the Rovuma basin. The group of engineers and designers will begin the project ‘in the coming months’.
On the insurgency that halted construction in March 2021, Gibbs commented: ‘There have been significant improvements in the safety situation since we started in 2021, and we know there is still more work to be done.’
Exxon's project in Cabo Delgado - a northern province affected for more than six years by terrorist attacks - was expected to produce 15.2 million tonnes a year. Still, the company is currently forecasting annual production of 18 million tonnes.
The Rovuma LNG project will be ‘the largest liquefied natural gas project in Africa, and may be the largest project in African history,’ Gibbs added.
Mozambique has three development projects approved to exploit the natural gas reserves of the Rovuma basin, classified among the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.
PVJ/ADB // ADB.
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