US oil company ExxonMobil has announced that it will not make a Final Investment Decision (FID) on the natural gas extraction project in the Rovuma basin in northern Mozambique until 2026. The information was released this Wednesday (14) by Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi after a meeting in Maputo with Liam Mallon, president of ExxonMobil Upstream, reports Lusa.
‘We focused our discussions on the initial engineering phase of the project, now with plans to finalise approvals and take the DFI by 2026. With significant progress, it was 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 (LNG) sector,’ explained Nyusi.
ExxonMobil’s project in Mozambique initially envisaged production of 15.2 million tonnes per year, but the company is now forecasting annual production of 18 million tonnes. Globally, the oil company plans to double its liquefied natural gas (LNG) portfolio by 2030, with production at 24 million tonnes per year.
In May, the general manager of ExxonMobil in Mozambique, Arne Gibbs, said that the company he represents hoped to take over FID by the end of 2025.
At the time, Gibbs confirmed that the oil company had finalised the preliminary engineering and design work for the project, adding that the group of engineers and designers would begin work in the coming months.
Regarding the insurgency that forced construction to stop 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.’
The statements came in the same week that the head of state 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 a financial decision, now associated with the terrorist situation. This project already existed, it’s old, which means that there was clarity in its execution,’ criticised Nyusi, during the 10th edition of the Mozambique Mining and Energy Conference and Exhibition.
Specifically, the statesman called on the concessionaires of Area 1, led by TotalEnergies, to ‘accelerate the development of the resumption of onshore projects’ in view 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, he 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’.
Mozambique has three development projects approved to exploit the natural gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified as among the largest in the world, all located off the coast of Cabo Delgado province.
Two of these projects are larger and involve channelling the gas from the seabed to land, cooling it in a plant and then exporting it by sea in a liquid state.
One is led by TotalEnergies (Area 1 consortium) and work progressed until it was suspended indefinitely after the armed attack on Palma in March 2021, when the French energy company declared that it would only resume work when the area was safe. The other is the still unannounced investment led by ExxonMobil and Eni (Area 4 consortium).
A third completed, smaller project also belongs to the Area 4 consortium and consists of a floating platform for capturing and processing gas for export, directly at sea, which started up in November 2022.
