Total urges European countries to assist Mozambique

Maputo, 3 Oct (AIM) – The chairperson of the Board of Directors of the French oil and gas company Total, Patrick Pouyanne, has appealed to European countries to assist Mozambique in fighting terrorism in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Total is heading a consortium which is investing about US$23 billion in a natural gas liquefaction project, in Palma district, on the Cabo Delgado coast.

Islamic terrorists, known locally as “Al Shabaab”, are operating in several Cabo Delgado districts, including Palma. They now enjoy support from the international terrorist network which calls itself “Islamic State” (also known as ISIS or Daesh).

Speaking on 1 October at a press conference near Paris, cited by the Bloomberg news agency, Pouyanne said “western powers are coming to understand that an enclave of the Islamic State is being established in Mozambique, which would be “a great problem for the stability of east Africa”.

“It would be good to restore control, not just for the Total project, but for the stability of the region”, he added.

Pouyanne, who was received in Maputo last month by President Filipe Nyusi, to discuss the latest developments, said he could help draw the attention of European nations to the need to mobilise more support for Mozambique.

France, in particular, has interests in the region, possessing territories such as Reunion and Mayotte, in the western Indian Ocean,

Pouyanne took the opportunity to announce that work has begun on levelling the land on the Afungi Peninsula in Palma where the LNG factories will be installed. A quay and a runway have already been built, he added.

Initially, two LNG factories (known as “trains”) will be built in Afungi with the capacity to produce 12 million tonnes of LNG a year. The gas will come from the Atum and Golfinho fields in Offshore Area One of the Rovuma Basin, where Total is the operator.

Total holds 26.5 per cent of the shares in the “Mozambique-LNG” project in Area One. Its partners in the consortium are the Japanese company Mitsui (20 per cent), Mozambique’s own National Hydrocarbon Company, ENH (15 per cent), the Indian companies ONGC Videsh, Beas Rovuma Energy, and BRPL Ventures (10 per cent each), and PTTEP of Thailand (8.5 per cent).
(AIM)