Mozambique conflict stalls world’s costliest natural gas investment
By now, the government in Maputo should have been counting with keen anticipation the remaining period before what is currently the world’s single largest energy development investment, the French oil major Total’s US$20 billion natural gas development project in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique, bears fruit. Instead, the initiative to recover an estimated 65 trillion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas, an accomplishment that could completely transform the country’s economic fortunes hangs in a delicate balance following Total’s withdrawal from the site which was expected to commence gas production in 2024.
The reason? The country’s Cabo Delgado Province where the gas recovery operations’ nerve centre is being established has become a hotbed of armed conflict as competing interest groups unleash a tide of violence that has not only forced Total to set aside its ongoing development of the requisite infrastructure to proceed with the project, but has also turned the communities close to the centre of the conflict, particularly areas in the north of the country, into a war zone.
The Afungi natural gas site has been the scene of armed conflict reportedly involving detachments of Mozambique’s armed forces and assorted militants. Analysts of the ongoing conflict have named various believed protagonists, including ‘Jihadist forces’ in what has been a costly conflict in terms of lives lost and communities fractured.
The conflict has been sufficiently serious and sufficiently disruptive to cause Total, in April this year, to set aside, temporarily, the completion of the gas complex operating site for the natural gas project, withdrawing all of its staff from the construction site. Media updates on the situation state that the future of the gas recovery project, which was expected to commence production in 2024 now hangs in the balance even as a reportedly badly underequipped Mozambican army seeks to regain control of the affected areas close to the site where the gas recovery plant is being set up.
In the wake of its retreat from the ‘war zone’, Total had issued a statement in which the company was quoted as saying that “considering the evolution of the security situation,” the company was confirming “the withdrawal of all Mozambique LNG project personnel from the Afungi site. This situation leads Total, as operator of Mozambique LNG project, to declare force majeure,” the statement added.
Mozambique’s natural gas ‘breakthrough’ had promised to radically alter the fortunes of the former Portuguese colony which shares border with Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. The country gained independence from Portugal in 1975 following a protracted struggle against colonial rule and a roughly 16-year civil war that ended in 1992.
The ongoing conflict in Mozambique is now widely believed to have suspended the immediateterm prospects for the country sharing with others in Africa including Angola, the Republic of Congo, Ghana and the Republic of Congo, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo in transforming their energy resources into fortuneschanging earnings.