The chief executive of TotalEnergies said today that the French oil company is not far from having everything ready to restart work on natural gas exploration in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique.

Speaking during the presentation of the company's 2023 results in London, Patrick Pouyanné assured that: "we are mobilizing the contractors again and we are not far from having everything ready to restart the works".

"The last part is the refinancing of the project, which was suspended, let's say, when there were the events [of terrorism that forced the suspension of the project]," he emphasized, quoted by Rádio Nacional de Angola (RNA), adding that for TotalEnergies, what is needed now is to "reactivate the financial institutions around the world, and then when that is done we will restart the project, without giving dates.

Mozambique has three development projects approved to exploit the natural gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified among the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.

Two of these projects are larger and plan to channel the gas from the seabed to land, cooling it in a factory to export it by sea in a liquid state.

The largest is led by TotalEnergies (Area 1 consortium) and work progressed until it was suspended indefinitely following an armed attack on Palma in March 2021, when the French energy company declared that it would only resume work when the area was safe.