TotalEnergies will continue to grow its LNG business as the demand for the fuel rises due to the transition from coal to natural gas, according to Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies.
The Paris-based company is one of the world’s largest LNG players and its integrated LNG portfolio includes LNG export projects located all over the globe and also regasification capacity in Europe.
“We have grown a lot.. from less then 20 million tonnes in 2015,” Pouyanne said on Wednesday during the company’s 2023 strategy and outlook presentation in New York.
During 2022, TotalEnergies sold 48.1 million tonnes of LNG, up by 15 percent when compared to the year before.
Hovewher, during January-June this year, the company’s LNG sales dropped by 12 percent to 22 million tonnes due to lower demand in Europe.
TotalEnergies revealed on Wednesday it plans to grow its oil and gas production by 2-3 percent per year over the next five years, predominantly from LNG.
The company said it will develop a “top-tier pipeline” of LNG projects such as Qatar North Field expansion, Papua LNG, ECA LNG, Rio Grande, and Mozambique LNG, while leveraging its competitive advantage with positions in Europe regasification and in US exports.
Papua LNG FID
Ealrier this year, the Papua LNG partners launched fully-integrated front-end engineering and design (FEED) for the project.
TotalEnergies has a 40.1 percent operating stake in the LNG export project, ExxonMobil has 37.1 percent, and Santos owns a 22.8 percent interest.
The project calls for the design of about 4 million tonnes per year of liquefaction capacity adjacent to the existing PNG LNG processing facilities, operated by ExxonMobil and located 20 kilometers northwest of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea,
The facility will receives supplies from the Elk-Antelope gas field.
Also, the project includes the use of 2 million tonnes per year of liquefaction capacity in the existing trains of PNG LNG.
Pouyanne said the project partners could take a final investment decision on the project “by the end of this year or beginning of the next year.”
Mozambique LNG restart
TotalEnergies and its partners in the $20 billion Mozambique LNG project are still in talks with the contractors regarding the cost terms of their contracts as they work to restart the project.
The project’s EPC contractor is CCS JV, a venture between Saipem, McDermott, and Chiyoda.
TotalEnergies declared force majeure on the Mozambique LNG project in April 2021 and withdrew all personnel from the site due to new attacks.
Earlier this 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, TotalEnergies released the report regarding the humanitarian situation.
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.
Pouyanne said on Wednesday that TotalEnergies is still working to restart the project.
He said that the company is reviewing the report on human rights and will come back with more information “in the coming months”.
The CEO added 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.”
TotalEnegies hopes to start Mozambique LNG production in 2028.
