Maputo, Aug. 22, 2025 (Lusa) - The president of Mozambique, Daniel Chapo, insisted on Thursday that the decision to resume the natural gas exploration project in the country, suspended since 2021 due to terrorist attacks, depends on TotalEnergies, the leader of the investment.
‘The resumption depends on who is leading the project and who is leading the project at the moment is Total,’ he declared on the sidelines of a meeting with the president of Japanese multinational Mitsui in Yokohama, the Japanese city hosting the 9th Tokyo International Conference for Africa's Development (TICAD 9).
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.
TotalEnergies, leader of the Area 1 consortium, is developing a plant in Afungi, near Palma, to produce and export natural gas.
According to Daniel Chapo, it is in the interests of Mitsui, which has a 20% stake in this project, and of the Mozambican government that the investment be restarted, ‘but the decision rests with the leader’.
"We are all working flat out to see if, at any time, the project can be restarted. The force majeure clause conditions this project," concluded the President.
In July, Mozambique's government said that the conditions were in place for the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) mega-project in Cabo Delgado to resume, following a meeting between the President, Daniel Chapo, and the leader of TotalEnergies.
"It was a contact to restart activities. At the government level, all the conditions are being created to allow investors to restart activities as soon as possible," said the minister of mineral resources and energy, Estêvão Pale, at the time.
At issue was a meeting between the Mozambican head of state, Daniel Chapo, and the leader of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, in a meeting confirmed to Lusa by the French oil company, but whose agenda was not revealed at the time.
Patrick Pouyanné has previously acknowledged the possibility of resuming the $20 billion (€17.3 billion) megaproject by August and several subcontractors are receiving instructions to prepare to return to work on the Afungi peninsula in Cabo Delgado, far north of Mozambique, which was suspended four years ago due to terrorist attacks.
The multinational has a 26.5% stake in the project, which is mainly aimed at clients in Asia.
The Mozambican president said on 22 June that TotalEnergies must lift the ‘force majeure’ clause for the natural gas megaproject to go ahead finally.
‘If the “force majeure” clause is lifted,’ he said the same day, ‘the project will go ahead,’ which anticipates an annual production capacity of 13.12 million tonnes of LNG.
Since October 2017, the gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado has been facing an armed rebellion with attacks claimed by movements associated with the extremist group Islamic State, which have displaced more than a million people.
In 2024 alone, at least 349 people died in attacks by Islamic extremist groups in the province, an increase of 36% on the previous year, according to data recently released by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, an academic institution of the US Department of Defence that analyses conflicts in Africa.
LYCE/ADB // ADB.
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