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France’s TotalEnergies and its partners in the giant Mozambique LNG project recently lifted force majeure on the 12.8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) project.
The partners declared force majeure on the project in April 2021 and withdrew all personnel from the site due to new attacks.
Mozambique LNG includes the development of offshore gas fields in Mozambique’s Area 1 and a liquefaction plant at the Afungi complex.
Besides TotalEnergies, other partners in the project include Japan’s Mitsui, Mozambique’s ENH, Thailand’s PTT, and Indian firms ONGC, Bharat Petroleum, and Oil India.
Mozambique LNG’s EPC contractor is CCS JV, a venture between Saipem, McDermott, and Chiyoda.
Discussing the restart of the project and its costs during the third-quarter earnings call on October 30, Pouyanne said, “There is a funny figure, which is in some press news agencies, which speaks about $25 billion.”
“We are not at all, and I want to be clear and strong on this news, I don’t know people are playing games, which is not acceptable.. Some people have relinquished a letter that I sent to the President of Mozambique. It’s clear, it’s written $20 billion in the letter, out of which $4.5 billion came from what we spent in the last four years,” he said.
“So the budget when we left in 2021 was around, it was approved $15 billion, $16 billion. You add $4.5 billion, you are down to $20 billion, $20.5 billion. That’s the reality of this budget. And by the way, this cost, real cost, what we’ve done is that we spent, we’ve done all the detailed engineering and all the procurement has been done,” Pouyanne said.
2029
“As soon as we fully remobilize everybody, we are purely in a construction mode. And that’s why we said we are able to deliver the project by 2029. And so I’ve discovered some people were surprised. But in fact, we spent some money in order to, I would say, recapture part of the time, which was under force majeure,” he said.
Pouyanne said the budget is not a total $25 billion, and “I want to be strong, it’s $20 billion, $20.5 billion as we will restart.”
“I can confirm it because we had long discussions, of course, with contractors. And so we have put all these figures together with them. And including on the delivery in 2029, we have strong commitment. So we have realigned the whole system in order to be able to execute properly this project,” he said.
He added that the partners are now expecting the government to approve the new plan and budget, and “we are remobilizing the contractors in order to be able to execute the project within this schedule with a timetable of 2029, and that’s where we are,” he said.
