Anadarko, the large American independent, will take the Final Investment Decision (FID) on its proposed, two train, 12Million Metric Tonnes Per Annum liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, in Mozambique, next month, which is March 2019.

It is official.

Omar Mitha, Chief Executive Officer of the Mozambican state hydrocarbon company ENH, gave the specific date to a correspondent of Africa Oil+Gas Report, in Lagos, Nigeria.

“That’s what we are looking at”, Mitha told us on the side-lines of the West Africa International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (WAIPEC), held in Lagos, recently.

FID for the Anadarko led project, to monetise over 75Trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Golf-Atinho fields in the deep-waters of the Indian Ocean, has been long in coming. “Anadarko has gone through a steep learning curve to get here”, Mitha said. The resources were first discovered in February 2010. “They (Anadarko) haven’t done this kind of project before”.

Anadarko, the first company to encounter commercial sized gas accumulations offshore East Africa, has announced four long term Sales and Purchase Agreements with clients from mostly Asia, in the last 15 months. The latest deal, announced February 15, 2019, involves the sale of 1Million Metric Tonnes a year of LNG for a term of 15 years to India’s Bharat Petroleum. The deal gives the project a total of 8.5Million Metric Tonnes of LNG sales a year in signed contracts, lifting the operator over the 8Million Tonne threshold which the company said it wanted to reach before project sanction.

Anadarko leads the LNG project in an acreage named Area 1 with a 26.5% ownership stake. Other owners include ENH with 15%; Japan’s Mitsui Group, 20%; India’s ONGC Videsh, 16%; Bharat, 10% Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production, 8.5% and Oil India Ltd., 4%.

By Toyin Akinosho, Publisher