Good afternoon. The visit of Patrick Pouyanné, chief executive of French energy firm TotalEnergies, to Maputo today and his anticipated meeting with President Daniel Chapo are further signs that the company plans to restart work soon on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Cabo Delgado province. Two sources have told Zitamar News that they expect an announcement within a month on the lifting of “force majeure”, the legal status governing the suspension of the project’s contracts. That is assuming that TotalEnergies and the government agree to either settle or defer some unresolved issues, on which we hope to report shortly.
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From the Zitamar Live Blog:
As well as making sure that the economics of the project, known as Mozambique LNG, still stack up, TotalEnergies will want to ensure that the region is reasonably well-defended against insurgent attacks. The threat of the insurgency is one of the two factors that have kept the project in the freezer for the past four years, following the attack on the nearby town of Palma in March 2021 that led to its suspension.
