The Mozambican authorities are finalizing negotiations with the two consortia that won the sixth international tender for hydrocarbon exploration and production, but the contracts have yet to be approved and signed, the government said on last week.
“The negotiations are almost over and, at the latest, by the end of this year, the contracts will be presented to the government, so that it can approve them, so that operations can begin,” said the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Carlos Zacarias, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the eighth coordinating council of the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, which ended ton Wednesday last week in the city of Lichinga, Niassa province, northern Mozambique.
The Sixth Licensing Round for the Concession of Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production Areas was won by consortia led by the Italian company Eni and the Chinese company CNOOC.
Minister Zacarias said that the government would study the possibility of launching more international tenders for hydrocarbon exploration and prospecting, taking into account the country’s energy potential.
Taking advantage of Mozambique’s energy resources is even more pertinent given the “period of energy transition” the world is going through, he continued.
Mozambique has three development projects approved to exploit the natural gas reserves of the Rovuma basin, classified as one of the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.
Two of these projects are larger and involve channelling the gas from the seabed to land, cooling it in a plant to export it by sea in a liquid state.
One is led by TotalEnergies (Area 1 consortium) and work was progressing 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.
