Exxon awards $13 billion in Mozambique LNG contracts
MAPUTO (Bloomberg) - Exxon Mobil awarded contracts worth about $13 billion to three companies including JGC Holdings Corp. to build a giant liquefied natural gas plant in northern Mozambique, the country’s oil and gas regulator said.
The total cost of the Exxon-led Rovuma project will be about $23.6 billion, a spokeswoman for the National Petroleum Institute said Wednesday by email. That’s less than the $27 billion to $33 billion that Johannesburg-based Standard Bank Ltd. had earlier estimated.
Japanese company JGC will be joined by Fluor Corp. and TechnipFMC to develop the plant scheduled to start production in 2025.
Exxon approved spending of more than $500 million for preliminary works before a final investment decision next year, the energy giant said Tuesday from the Mozambican capital, Maputo. Exxon’s plant is planned to produce 15.2 million tons of LNG per year, higher than another project that Total SA is developing in the same region with capacity of 12.9 million tons.
Mozambique is counting on the projects to boost income in what is the world’s 7th-poorest country by gross domestic product per capita. The size of the economy was about $15 billion last year.