MITSUI EXPECTS LNG PROGRESS BY MARCH

The Japanese company Mitsui has announced that it expects “certain progress” by March next year in the project to build a plant producing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in Palma district, in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.The company holds a twenty per cent stake in the Offshore Area One consortium where the operator is the US company Anadarko Petroleum. The consortium is still to make its final investment decision (FID) on how it will commercialise the 75 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas already found in the concession.However, the news agency Reuters reports that on Wednesday the chief financial officer of Mitsui, Keigo Matsubara, told a press conference that the company expects “certain progress” in the LNG project by the end of the financial year (31 March 2017).Anadarko has a 26.5 per cent holding in Area One. In addition to Mitsui, its partners in the consortium are ONGC Videsh and BRPL Ventures of India (20 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively), the Thai Group PTT (8.5 per cent) and Mozambique’s own National Hydrocarbons Company, ENH (15 per cent).Initially, Anadarko plans to produce 12 million tonnes of LNG a year, using two factories (known as “trains”). Later it hopes to raise production to 20 million tonnes a year.