French energy giant TotalEnergies hopes to resume construction on its giant Mozambique LNG project by the middle of 2024, according to Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies.
TotalEnergies declared force majeure on the Mozambique LNG 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 12.8 mtpa liquefaction plant at the Afungi complex.
Besides TotalEnergies, other partners in the project are Japan’s Mitsui, Mozambique’s ENH, Thailand’s PTT, and Indian firms ONGC, Bharat Petroleum, and Oil India.
The project’s EPC contractor is CCS JV, a venture between Saipem, McDermott, and Chiyoda.
Last year, Pouyanne said the company was “not in a hurry” to resume the project, pointing out that security, human rights, and maintaining costs are the main three elements to make the decision to return to the Afungi site in the province of Cabo Delgado.
The CEO entrusted Jean-Christophe Rufin, an expert in humanitarian action and human rights, with an independent mission to assess the humanitarian situation in the province.
In May 2023, TotalEnergies released the report regarding the humanitarian situation.
Pouyanne said in September that TotalEnergies is still working to restart the project.
The CEO at the time the last condition for the company and its partners to resume the project is that the “contractors stick to their EPC contracts and not inflate the costs, otherwise we can wait longer.”
Pouyanne said on Wendesday in London during a presentation of the company’s 2023 results and 2024 objectives that TotalEnergies is now “remobilizing the contractors”.
“And I think we are not far from having everything set with them,” he said.
Pouyanne also said that TotalEnergies is relaunching detailed engineering, and remobilizing project financing.
“We are reactivating with all these financial institutions around the world, this project financing and when all that will be done, we will start again the project,” he said.
“They have listened to our messages”
Answering a question about Mozambique LNG, Pouyanne said that he hopes that construction “will come back by middle of the year. We monitor that.”
“Again, what I don’t want to do is to take a decision to bring back people to be obliged to get out again, because that would be too complex,” he said.
“But again, today, the discussions.. we have progressed a lot with the suppliers, I mean the different contractors, in a good way. I mean including on the costs, we had some debates. They have listened to our messages,” he said.
“They want to reactivate it,” Pouyanne said.
“We are working on it. It should come in the coming months,” the CEO said.