American independent Anadarko took the second major step towards a Four Train, 20MMTPA LNG plant from Offshore Mozambique on Tuesday January 8, 2013.
The company’s award of a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract to a Joint Venture vehicle comprising Fluor and JGC comes two weeks after it reached Heads of Agreement (HOA) with Eni, establishing foundational principles for the coordinated development of the common natural gas reservoirs spanning both Mozambique’s Offshore Area 1 (operated by Anadarko) and Offshore Area 4 (operated by Eni). Anadarko targets the first LNG cargo for 2018.
The facility will be located in the Cabo Delgado province, 2 000 km north-east of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo. Anadarko discovered massive reservoirs of gas in the Indian Ocean offshore Mozambique in early 2010. Eni arrived later, continuing the luck in a different block. Both companies are on record as saying that the reservoirs are some of the largest discoveries in their portfolios in over 10 years.
New York listed Flour and Japanese firm JGC have a 50-50 partnership in the JV that won the FEED contract. They say they have “ brought together a talented and experienced team that leverages the combined strengths of JGC’s industry-leading LNG experience with Fluor’s fifty-plus year reputation for executing large complex projects in sub-Saharan Africa.”
The FEED will deliver designs for the initial phase of the project, which will consist of four trains, each capable of producing five-million tons a year of liquefied natural gas (LNG), culminating in 20-million metric tons a year. The project has the potential to expand to a capacity of about 50-million metric tons a year of LNG.
This is another major project that should help to catapult Mozambique from the poverty level she’s steeped in and uplift the living standards of the people. The country dearly needed this kind of boost after suffering decades of stagnation. Now with MOZAL, Coal in Moatize and Natural Gas in Cabo Delgado one hopes that more wonders are still to be uncovered!