U.S. major ExxonMobil expects to make a final investment decision on its liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique in 2026, President Filipe Nyusi announced on Wednesday, according to the Club of Mozambique.
The head of state met in Maputo with Liam Mallon, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Company. Nyusi and Mallon discussed “progress on the LNG project” in the Rovuma Basin, Cabo Delgado.
ExxonMobil’s CEO in Mozambique, Arne Gibbs, had announced on May 3 that the final investment decision could be made by the end of 2025.
“We are optimistic, we are moving forward, but we recognize that there are still challenges,” he said in statements quoted by financial news agency Bloomberg, in which Gibbs signaled that the FID would not be made until the end of next year, fulfilling the July forecast of a 2025 start.
Gibbs’ comments came in the same week that Mozambique’s president said the financing was no reason to delay the implementation of the natural gas megaprojects led by France’s TotalEnergies and the US’s ExxonMobil.
In his speech, Nyusi called on the concessionaires of Area 1, led by TotalEnergies, to “accelerate the development of the resumption of onshore projects,” given the “gradual promising stability” in the Afungi peninsula, Palma district, Cabo Delgado, and addressed the concessionaires of Area 4, onshore, led by ExxonMobil, recommending that “the process leading to the final investment decision be accelerated, with the necessary adjustments to the development plan approved in 2018.”
In statements quoted by Bloomberg on May 3, Arne Gibbs confirmed that Exxon has completed the preliminary engineering and design work for the 18 million tonne per year project in the Rovuma Basin, adding that the group of engineers and designers would begin the project “in the coming months”.
Exxon’s project in Cabo Delgado – a northern province that has been plagued by terrorist attacks for more than six years – was originally conceived as a PR
