The President of Mozambique, Daniel Chapo, will, on Thursday, in Afungi, in the Cabo Delgado province, preside over the relaunch of the Mozambique LNG project led by the French company TotalEnergies, according to a statement from the President’s office.
TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanne will also attend the event.
The resumption of this project represents a “significant milestone for the national economy and reaffirms the confidence of international partners in Mozambique’s energy, institutional, and human potential,” the statement said.
Also, the restart of the project will have a direct and significant impact on job creation, both during the construction phase and during operation, it said.
LNG Prime invited TotalEnergies to comment on the project restart.
“For now, we confirm that there is a full restart ceremony taking place today in Mozambique, where our CEO is together with President Chapo,” a TotalEnergies spokesperson said.
In October last year, TotalEnergies and its partners lifted force majeure on the project worth approximately $20.5 billion.
The partners declared force majeure on the project in April 2021 and withdrew all personnel from the site due to new attacks.
Besides TotalEnergies, other partners in the project include Japan’s Mitsui, Mozambique’s ENH, Thailand’s PTT, and Indian firms ONGC, Bharat Petroleum, and Oil India.
Mozambique LNG’s EPC contractor is CCS JV, a venture between Saipem, McDermott, and Chiyoda.
Last month, TotalEnergies announced that the partners in the giant Mozambique LNG project had agreed to provide additional equity to replace the contributions by the UK and Dutch export agencies.
In 2020, Mozambique LNG concluded a project financing for a total amount of $15.4 billion with a group of approximately 30 lenders including export credit agencies and commercial banks.
Due to the prolonged force majeure period, Mozambique LNG has negotiated with the lenders an amended financing agreement in order to align the documentation with the updated project schedule, TotalEnergies said.
After the lifting of force majeure by Mozambique LNG, and the will of the consortium to resume the project, Mozambique LNG partners decided to proceed without the participation of UKEF and Atradius since these two export credit agencies had not yet reconfirmed their commitment, the company said.
2029
TotalEnergies said in a statement later on Thursday that, during the meeting with Chapo and Pouyanne, the government of Mozambique confirmed its commitment to work together with Mozambique LNG to support the restart of project activities and address the consequences of the force majeure period.
In particular, the government confirmed all measures taken to address the security and the continued cooperation with Rwanda, it said.
TotalEnergies noted that construction activities have now restarted both offshore and onshore at Afungi site, with over 4,000 workers currently mobilized of which over 3,000 are Mozambican nationals.
First LNG is expected in 2029 as the project progress is currently at 40 percent – almost all engineering and procurement of main equipments have been executed during the force majeure period, TotalEnergies said.
(This article was updated with a TotalEnergies statement.)
