Hirotatsu Fujiwara, Mitsui's Executive Managing Officer, reportedly said: “We had hoped to have finalised the negotiations with (the) Mozambican government by December.”
He went on to say that the project (which has two trains with a combined capacity of 12 million tpy) is expected to commence operations in 2022 – 2023, following an approximately four-year construction period.
Fujiwara reportedly added that the project partners are currently holding discussions with Japanese power and gas utilities, with plans to finalise long-term offtake agreements within one year. Project partners include Anadarko Petroleum, Mitsui, ONGC Videsh Ltd, Bharat PetroResources Ltd, Oil India Ltd and PTT Exploration & Production Plc.
Fujiwara noted that the Mozambique LNG project has currently secured over 8 million tpy of non-binding long-term commitments. However, the project needs to secure binding commitments to account for approximately 80% of the facility’s total capacity in order to receive the required funding for FID. Fujiwara noted that the project was willing to provide buyers with various price benchmarks.