India’s wait for Mozambique LNG gets longer, at stake $8 bn investment
livemint.comOVL, BPRL and OIL hold 16%, 10% and 4% stake respectively in the project, operated by France's TotalEnergies with a 26.5% stake. The other partners are Japan’s Mitsui & Co. (20%), Mozambique’ state-run Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos or ENH (15%) and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Plc.
or PTTEP (8.5%). With the production from Rovuma basin originally slated to start in 2018, India was to get its first LNG consignment from Mozambique by 2019. “TotalEnergies is the operator for Rovuma Area-1 Offshore Mozambique (Area-1) block, where force majeure is in place.
Once the force majeure is lifted, the production can start immediately. This is no problem with the asset quality per se. This asset has seen the biggest gas discovery in the recent past," said an Indian government official, requesting anonymity.
The importance of the Mozambique project in India’s energy security stratagem can be gauged from the fact that external affairs minister S. Jaishankar visited the African country in April last year, becoming the first Indian foreign minister to visit it since 2010. This was followed by a visit of India’s petroleum and natural gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri in October last year, when he met Mozambique’s minister of mineral resources and energy Carlos Zacarias.
A Mitsui & Co spokesperson in an emailed response said, “We are not in the position to answer to your inquiries. Please ask TotalEnergies, the operator or Indian companies." TotalEnergies has also flagged the impending Presidential elections in Mozambique and its importance for the LNG project, as articulated by its chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné in a July investor call. A TotalEnergies spokesperson in an emailed response said, "The project is still
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