FLNG Platform Leaves South Korea Today for Mozambique.

The launch of gas exploration in northern Mozambique is already on the horizon: the floating platform that will make real a decade-old ambition of the country will be launched this Monday.

Similar to a giant ship, 432 meters long, it is ready in the shipyards of Samsung’s industrial division in Geoje, South Korea, announced the exploratory consortium (led in this project by the Coral Sul oil company Eni) and the Mozambican government.

The platform will cross the Indian Ocean to be anchored off the coast of Cabo Delgado, secured by 20 cables, and start production during the first half of 2022.

It will be the first deepwater gas platform and the first project of its kind developed in Africa.

Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, will participate in Monday’s ceremony, signaling the importance for the country’s economy of the start of the exploration of gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified among the largest in the world.

The infrastructure will be connected to six wells and extract the gas to a factory on board that will cool and liquefy it, so that it can be transported by freighters, which will be filled up right there, side by side, on the high seas, and then take the fuel to the destination countries to produce electricity, heating or other purposes.

All production from the Coral Sul project will be sold to BP for 20 years, with an option to extend for another 10.

The platform has storage tanks on the hull and 13 modules above them, including a liquefaction plant, an eight-story module where 350 people can live, and a helicopter pad.

Mozambique has already been exporting gas for 17 years, from the Pande and Temane wells to South Africa: these are onshore deposits in the south of the country, connected to the neighboring country via a gas pipeline.

But the reserves in the Rovuma basin, under the Indian Ocean, close to the border with Tanzania, are 20 times larger, estimated to reach 160 billion cubic feet (tcf), according to the Mozambican National Petroleum Institute (INP).

Mozambique hopes to put the exploration projects to work in time to convert those reserves into revenue for the state, at a time of growing global pressure to abandon fossil fuels.

Mozambique is betting on gas as a source of energy for the transition to cleaner energy, therefore, with greater longevity, and also points out as an advantage the lower carbon content of the Rovuma gas, technically classified as cleaner.

The Rovuma basin has three approved projects: the Area 4 floating platform, a project budgeted at 6.12 billion Euros and which will be the first to start up, with the goal of producing 3.4 million tons of natural gas per year (mtpa).

Source: LNG,Oil & Gas / 360mozambique.com