The President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, announced on Sunday that the country has started exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced in the insurgency-hit north.
According to Nyusi, the first export shipment of gas produced at the off-shore Coral Sul plant, managed by Italian company Eni, has left territorial waters.
“Today, Mozambique enters the annals of world history as one of the exporting countries of LNG,” the President declared.
Estimates have shown that once all the gas deposits were tapped, Mozambique could become one of the world’s 10 biggest exporters.
But the region has since been hit by an insurgency waged by Islamic State-linked militants that has cast doubts over the viability of LNG exploration sites, and stalled progress.
Eni’s Coral Sul is the only one of three mega-projects in the Muslim-majority region to be on track. The other two, operated by TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, have been put on hold because of the unrest.
The first floating liquified natural gas (LNG) facility deployed in deep waters off Africa, Coral Sul can produce 3.4 million tonnes of LNG a year.
Eni’s CEO Claudio Descalzi described the first gas shipment as a “significant step forward” in the firm’s strategy “to leverage gas as a source that can contribute in a significant way to Europe’s energy security, also through the increasing diversification of supplies”.
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