Patrick Pouyanne, the CEO of the French oil and gas company, TotalEnergies, which heads the Mozambique LNG Project, located on the Afungi peninsula, in Palma district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, has announced that operations may resume by the middle of this year.

According to Pouyanne, and disclosed by the LNG Prime Media outlet, “TotalEnergies and its partners in the giant Mozambique LNG project are planning to restart construction on the 12.8 mtpa (million tonnes a year) project by the middle of this year.”

Last March, the board of the United States Export-Import Bank approved a loan of almost five billion dollars for the LNG.

The LNG project is budgeted at around 20 billion dollars. The Export-Import Bank had previously agreed a 4.7 billion dollar loan under President Donald Trump’s first administration, but it needed to be re-approved after construction on the project was frozen in 2021 following a major attack by Islamist terrorists against Palma town.

Pouyanne said last February that he expected financing from the United States to be approved, with other credit agencies to follow in the ensuing months. The company had been waiting for loan re-approvals from the United States, UK and Dutch export credit agencies before lifting a force majeure on the project that has been in place since the 2021 terrorist raid.

It was hoped that the project, known simply as “Mozambique LNG”, in which TotalEnergies holds a 26.5 per cent operating stake, would make Mozambique one of the major LNG producers in the world. But the jihadist raid of 2021 brought all work on the project to a halt.

The government also expects the UK and Netherlands to reconfirm their support so that the project may resume.