It was through a video that Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced the start of exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), produced off the northern province of Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country. The first LNG cargo left the Coral Sul offshore plant, operated by Italy’s ENI.
It is a success for Mozambique, which aims to become one of the leading gas producers in the world, but a success to be put into perspective, because the province of Cabo Delgado has been in the grip of a violent armed insurrection since 2017.
Also, does this first shipment of LNG mark Mozambique’s entry into the circle of major gas producers? In any case, this is what Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi wants to believe, who believes that today his country ” go down in the annals of the world “.
The first deliveries of LNG are an undeniable success, but to be put into perspective. The gas field, operated offshore by the Italian ENI, is capable of producing up to three million tonnes of gas per year. ENI has built an offshore platform which includes a well and a gas liquefaction plant. The boats therefore dock directly on the platform, without having to reach the mainland.
It is this position at sea that allows the project to operate, as the others that include facilities on the coast are at a standstill due to the violence that continues to rock the province of Cabo Delgado.
Uncertain security situation
Despite international military interventions, since September 2021 – notably those of Rwandan forces and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – the security situation remains uncertain in the province of Cabo Delgado.
The allied forces have achieved significant successes in the face of the jihadist insurgency, in 2021 in particular, but the situation is far from being settled. The insurgents dispersed, the front fragmented and the violence even spread to a neighboring province.
More than a million people have had to flee the Cabo Delgado region and UN agencies are reporting an increasingly dramatic humanitarian situation as well as widespread violence.
Read also: Jihadists in Mozambique extend their attacks to areas hitherto spared
Under these conditions, apart from ENI’s off-shore project, the other gas exploitation projects, including that of the French Total Energies, are frozen, even though the country is potentially a major gas producer in the world. .
Mozambique discovered in 2010 that it could compete with a country like Qatar. 5,000 billion cubic meters of gas is five times more than what the Senegalese have discovered off their coasts and it is as much as the Nigerian gas giant has.
Potentially, the country could export 60 million tons of gas per year and become the fourth or fifth gas power in the world, but we are still very far from that and, as long as the security crisis is not resolved, the exploitation of gas will remain weak.