MAPUTO (Reuters) -Mozambique has created the necessary conditions for the resumption of TotalEnergies’ $20 billion liquefied natural gas project in the country, the country’s energy minister was quoted as saying by Portuguese news agency Lusa on Monday.
TotalEnergies, which halted construction in 2021 after an Islamic State-linked insurgency attack threatened its Afungi site in the north of Mozambique, has said it wants to resume development this summer.
TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanne met with Mozambique President Daniel Chapo on Thursday to discuss restarting activities after security interventions helped reduce, but not entirely eradicate, insurgent attacks around its base.
“It was a meeting with the perspective of restarting activities,” Estevao Pale, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy said at an event in Inhambane province on Monday, referring to the president’s meeting last week.
“At the government level, all the conditions are being created to allow investors to restart activities as quickly as possible,” Lusa quoted Pale as saying.
TotalEnergies declined to comment.
(Reporting by Manuel Mucari and America Hernandez, writing by Wendell Roelf; editing by Jane Merriman)
