Construction of Sh55tr gas plant in Mozambique starts

Palma/Dar. Mozambique yesterday started constructing a multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas project offshore, operated by the US energy giant Anadarko on the country’s remote northern coast.

President Filipe Nyusi laid the foundation stone in Palma in the Cabo Delgado province, hailing the $25-billion Rovuma basin LNG project.

“With this project, Mozambique will change, Palma will change,” he told thousands of guests who witnessed the project launch in the impoverished region, just two months before national elections.

The country’s gas deposits are estimated at 5,000 billion cubic metres and would make Mozambique a major exporter of liquefied natural gas. Annual production is expected to start in 2024 with an estimated output of 12 million tonnes.

The government is predicting strong future growth for the former Portuguese colony on the back of its resource bounty.

Mozambique is hoping the discovery of the gigantic gas reserves at the beginning of the decade will bring about economic rebirth in the southeast African nation.

The project is forging ahead despite militant insurgent attacks that have claimed more than 250 lives and frustrated operations. A shadowy jihadist group has targeted the Muslim-majority Cabo Delgado province since October 2017.

Convoys carrying contractors for Anadarko have been attacked at least twice, although the company has previously told AFP it does not believe it had been deliberately targeted.

Anadarko has previously said Mozambique’s natural gas reserves, “are among the best and the largest in the world”.

Mozambique and Tanzania started exploring for natural gas almost during the same time but there has been dilly dallying on negotiations for an LNG Plant. President Magufuli said last month that it was due to dilly-dallying in the development of Tanzania’s natural gas sector that some experts ended up being subjected to harassment and frustration.

“Mozambique is far ahead of us while we started during the same time. We have been only good at suspending each other. Even the expert who was involved in developing our natural gas and who did a wonderful job in the USA was suspended in 2016,” President Magufuli said.

He said the expert who he later revealed to be the former managing director for the state-owned Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC), was suspended because he refused to receive a bribe from a certain company that wanted to be given two natural gas blocks in the deep sea.