The President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, participated in the christening of the South Coral Floating Platform bound for Mozambique today at the Samsung Heavy Industries Co. shipyard in the port city of Geoje, on South Korea's southern coast.

The newly christened floating offshore infrastructure, 432 meters long, 66 meters wide and 39 meters high, is capable of producing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) off the coast of Mozambique.

The event comes after four years ago the Korean shipyard, Samsung Heavy Industries Co. won a $2.5 million deal to build the first offshore oil facility to be deployed in deep water on the African continent.

A statement from Eni, to which MZNews had access, states that the plant is ready to be towed to its installation area in the Rovuma basin in Cabo Delgado.

"Manufacturing and construction activities for the FLNG facility began in 2018 and were completed on schedule and within cost, despite the constraints caused by the pandemic," it reads.

The Italian firm guarantees that LNG production will start in the second half of next year, and expects that it will increase the availability of gas "in a restricted market", besides creating, locally, about 800 jobs during the operation period.

The platform followed the world's vision for reducing carbon emissions, and implemented an energy optimization approach through a systematic analysis of improvements.

"This process includes, among others, not flaring the gas to atmosphere during normal operations, use of high-efficiency gas heat turbines for the refrigeration compressors and power generation, use of DryLow NOx technology to reduce Nitrogen Oxide emissions, and waste heat recovery systems for processing the gas."

Eni's Director of Development, Operations and Energy Efficiency, Stefano Maione, quoted in the note, said "Coral South FLNG is a world-class achievement in engineering, construction know-how and technology, suited to kick-start the development of Mozambique's world-class resources."

Partners in field development in Mozambique include the state-owned Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS). This, through KG Mozambique, has invested $513 million, in the floating LNG project in South Coral Area 4, and owns a 10% stake. KOGAS has guaranteed up to 640 million dollars of debt financing for the project.