Sawt Falasteen - Huge Mozambique gas project restarts after five-year pause

Reportedly the largest private investment in Africa's energy infrastructure, the Mozambique LNG project is expected to generate thousands of jobs and help make the country one of the world's biggest LNG exporters.

TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne announced the restart of the work at a ceremony attended by President Daniel Chapo.

"I am delighted to announce the full restart of the Mozambique LNG project... The force majeure is over," Pouyanne said.

The $20-billion project in the northern Cabo Delgado province on the border with Tanzania was suspended following the 2021 attack that killed an estimated 800 people.

TotalEnergies had already lifted in October the force majeure it declared after the bloodshed and has sought compensation of $4.5 billion in cost overruns linked to the delay from the Mozambique government.

There are already more than 4,000 workers on site and 80 percent are Mozambican nationals, said Pouyanne, whose company owns a 26.5-percent stake in Mozambique LNG.

"This project will make the region a new source of global energy security," he said.

- Celebration, resilience -

"It is a day of celebration for Mozambique, for Africa and for the world," Chapo said.

"It is a historic moment, representing much more than the start of construction work," he said.

"It represents the victory, resilience, courage and determination of the Mozambican people," he added.

Mozambique is "capable of overcoming challenges and restoring the confidence of domestic and foreign investors", he said.

Chapo's office said in a statement ahead of the ceremony that the restart of the project "presents a significant milestone for the national economy".

But environmental groups have called the project a "climate bomb" that would bring little benefit to Mozambicans, more than 80 percent of whom lived below the poverty line of $3 per day in 2022, according to the World Bank.

TotalEnergies is seeking a 10-year extension to its concession, more than double the length of the delay. It was not immediately clear if Maputo would approve the extension.

Northern Mozambique has been battered by a bloody jihadist insurgency since late 2017.

While the region has not experienced an attack on the scale of the one in 2021, there are regular attacks on civilians and troops blamed on jihadist insurgents.

In 2021, insurgents stormed the port town of Palma, a few kilometres from the TotalEnergies site, sending thousands of people fleeing into the surrounding forest.

Conflict tracker ACLED estimated more than 800 people were killed.

The insurgency has left more than 6,200 people dead since 2017, according to ACLED, which collects data on conflict zones.

It is blamed on a group referred to as "Al-Shabaab" by locals and authorities -- despite no known link to the Somali jihadist group -- that seeks to impose Sharia law in Cabo Delgado, a neglected outpost that has become fertile ground for radical ideology.

Several gas projects in the area, also involving Italian group ENI and American oil giant ExxonMobil, could "make Mozambique one of the world's top ten (natural gas) producers, contributing 20 percent of African production by 2040", according to a 2024 report by the audit firm Deloitte.

E.Aziz--SF-PST