Mozambique exports its first shipment of LNG

Mozambique has officially started exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), President Filipe Nyusi said in a video statement on Sunday (November 13th). “It is with great honor that I announce the start of the first LNG export”, he said. The first cargo of gas was produced at the Coral Sul offshore plant, managed by the Italian group Eni, added the head of state.

This is the first export under a long-term purchase and sale contract with British giant BP, covering the total volumes of LNG produced in Mozambique, President Nyusi said. According to him, the country offers “a stable, transparent and predictable environment for making multi-billion investments”.

The first floating LNG facility deployed in deep waters off the coast of Africa, the Coral Sul liquefaction unit can produce 3.4 million tonnes of LNG per year. Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi hailed a “significant progress” in the company’s strategy to make gas a source “which can contribute significantly to Europe’s energy security, in particular through the increasing diversification of supplies”.

Jihadist fighters

After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia drastically reduced its gas supplies to Europe. Many states are in competition for access to LNG. But this gas is much more expensive to import than that which arrived via the gas pipelines between Russia and Europe. Mozambique has high hopes for vast deposits of natural gas, the largest ever discovered south of the Sahara, which were discovered in northern Cabo Delgado province in 2010. Once exploited, these deposits could make Mozambique one of the ten largest exporters in the world.

But the impoverished province of Cabo Delgado, with a Muslim majority, is plagued by attacks by jihadist fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group, which have killed nearly 4,000 people since October 2017, according to the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project ( Acled), which collects data in conflict zones. The violence also caused the flight of 820,000 people. A major attack in 2021 in the coastal city of Palma forced the French giant TotalEnergies to suspend its gas project worth 16.5 billion euros. A project of the American ExxonMobil is also suspended.

Since July, Rwanda and neighboring southern African countries have deployed more than 3,100 troops in support of the struggling Mozambican army. Jihadist groups entrenched inland, however, continued to carry out sporadic attacks, adopting more traditional guerrilla tactics. In September, the Mozambican president estimated ” pertinent “ forecast a resumption of activity at future natural gas production sites in the north of the country.