Growth through sustainable ocean

Mozambique will promote ocean literacy through formal education, awareness and conservation activities so that its economic and social growth is sustainable and does not harm the environment, said the country’s President Filipe Nyusi Thursday. Nyusi made the remarks while addressing the opening of the 2nd edition of the “Crescendo Azul” (Growing Blue) Conference, which took place under the motto “Investing in the Health of the Ocean Is Investing in the Future of the Planet,” in the tourist resort of Vilankulo, southern province of Inhambane. Speaking to around 1,500 participants in physical and virtual forms, the president said the country has an ambitious commitment to the issues of the sea and the planet.

 “It is our expectation that Crescendo Azul will make a major contribution to the future of humanity as well as the climate environment,” said Nyusi, stressing that intelligent ocean governance is a strategic focus to protect the planet, as it is the main weapon to combat the harmful effects of climate change. Another global concern is the misuse of resources, which will lead to habitat destruction, and pollution, overfishing, while piracy and terrorism put pressure on humanity’s wellbeing, he said. Mozambique has a coastline of more than 2,600 kilometres, which gives it potential for economic development, and the exploitation of marine resources should be guided by a strong, integrated, and long-term commitment, said the president.

“Investing in the health of the oceans presupposes the development of a sustainable, socially just, equitable and inclusive blue economy, as well as promoting peace and stability,” he said.

The two-day event brought together prominent personalities, including the President of the Republic of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta, and politicians, diplomats, business people, and scholars in oceanology, from Portugal, Indonesia, Seychelles, among others. Participants of the Crescendo Azul conference will also debate maritime spatial management plans that involve several countries in the Indian Ocean region.

Agribusiness sustainability

The chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of Mozambique (CCM) has challenged commercial banks to grant agriculture credit lines at an attractive cost, so as to boost a sector which occupies 80% of the economically active population in the country. Álvaro Massingue revealed that many credit applications filed by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the agricultural sector were unsuccessful. The Chamber of Commerce therefore proposes urgent attempts to find “a cushion in an agricultural guarantee fund or in the coverage, through insurance, of the risks associated with agriculture”.Massingue also stressed the need for the government to create fiscal policies and strategies which encourage agriculture throughout all of its value chain.

“We took note with some apprehension of the introduction of yet another fee on water boreholes,” he said. “This [new fee] will have negative effects on the development of agriculture. We are therefore calling for a review of this measure, due to the impacts that it will have on business indicators.” Massingue was speaking at a webinar on the rice and tomato value chain in Mozambique organised by CCM in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Stuttgart this week. “We chose rice and tomatoes for their importance in the economy and for the fact that they constitute a raw material for boosting the associated industries, as well as for their valuable contribution to family incomes,” Massingue noted. Participants included members of the government and representatives of the private sector.

  

Coral-Sul FLNG ready to sail away to Mozambique’s

 Eni as Delegated Operator and on behalf of its Area 4 Partners (ExxonMobil, CNPC, GALP, KOGAS and ENH) held today the naming and sail away ceremony of the Coral-Sul FLNG, the first floating LNG facility ever to be deployed in the deep waters of the African continent. The event took place at Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in Geoje, South Korea, in the presence of H.E. Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, President of the Republic of Mozambique, and H.E. Moon Jae-in, President of the Republic of Korea.

The FLNG, which is part of the Coral South Project, will be now towed and moored at its operating site in the Rovuma basin offshore Mozambique. Production startup is expected in the second half of 2022, and it will contribute to increase gas availability in a tight market.

Coral South Project achieved Final Investment Decision in 2017, only 36 months after the last appraisal well. FLNG fabrication and construction activities started in 2018 and were completed on cost and on time, despite the pandemic. While performing the construction activities in Korea, several significant activities were undertaken in Mozambique, with full support from the Mozambican Authorities, including the ultra-deep water (2000m wd) drilling and completion campaign that involved the highest technological and operational skills and equipment.

The Coral South Project will generate significant Government take for the Country while creating more than 800 new jobs during the operation period.

Stefano Maione, Director Development, Operations & Energy Efficiency at Eni, said: “The Coral Sul FLNG is a world-class feat of engineering, construction know-how and technology, suited to kick-off the development of Mozambique’s world-class resources. The project fits integrally with and within the Eni’s energy transition strategy, as we move towards a decarbonised energy future, in which gas is playing an essential and transitional role”.

Coral-Sul FLNG has implemented an energy optimization approach, integrated in the design via a systematic analysis of energy efficiency improvements. These include among others, zero flaring during normal operations, use of thermal efficient aero-derivative gas turbines for refrigerant compressors and power generation, use of Dry Low NOx technology to reduce NOx emission and waste heat recovery systems for gas processing.

 About Coral Sul FLNG

The Coral Sul FLNG is 432 meters long and 66 meters wide, weighs around 220,000 tons and has the capacity to accommodate up to 350 people in its eight-story Living Quarter module. Once the FLNG facility will be in place, the installation campaign will begin, including mooring and hook-up operations at a water-depth of around 2,000 meters by means of 20 mooring lines that totally weight 9,000 tons. FLNG treatment and liquefaction installation has a gas liquefaction capacity of 3.4 million tons per year (MTPA) and will put in production 450 billion cubic meters of gas from the giant Coral reservoir, located in the offshore Rovuma Basin.

About Eni

Eni has been present in Mozambique since 2006. Between 2011 and 2014, the company discovered supergiant natural gas resources in the Rovuma basin, in the Coral, Mamba Complex and Agulha reservoirs, holding estimated 2,400 billion cubic metres of gas in place. Eni also holds exploration rights to offshore blocks A5-B, Z5-C and Z5-D in the Angoche and Zambezi basins.

About Area 4

Area 4 is operated by Mozambique Rovuma Venture S.p.A. (MRV), an incorporated joint venture owned by Eni, ExxonMobil and CNPC, which holds a 70 percent interest in the Area 4 exploration and production concession contract. In addition to MRV, Galp, KOGAS and Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos E.P. each hold a 10 percent interest in Area 4. Eni is the offshore Delegated Operator and is leading the construction and operation of the floating liquefied natural gas facility on behalf of MRV.

Aiming at 62% of renewable energy by 2030

Speaking at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change currently underway in Glasgow on Tuesday, Prime Minister of Mozambique Carlos Agostinho do Rosário committed the country to achieving 62% of energy from renewable resources by 2030.

“It is a priority for Mozambique to implement an energy transition program based on a diversified matrix, with cleaner and more environmentally friendly sources, in line with our country’s development programs,” the prime minister said, indicating investment in hydroelectric, solar and wind power. However, transitioning away from energy based on fossil sources entails costs, and must be a phased process.

“Mozambique prefers an energy transition to cleaner and more environmentally friendly energies that is gradual and phased, in order to minimize the impact on the process of economic development in our country,” he explained.In this sense, the country intends to make the energy transition process via natural gas, even though it is considered non-environmentally friendly, a decision influenced by the discoveries of great qualities of this resource in the national territory.

“Mozambique proposes to use natural gas as a transition to cleaner energy sources,” and with that, Carlos Agostinho do Rosário guaranteed that the country will do everything to “reach, by the year 2030, the levels of 62% of the contribution of renewable energies in the national energy matrix within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals”.

Mozambique PM at #COP26 “We are in favour of an energy transition” – but need international support to achieve it Mozambique is one of 21 countries that still have more than one planned coal plant. #NoNewCoalhttps://t.co/hWNTNMS0BU pic.twitter.com/WVQw6YegZH

— Ember (@EmberClimate) November 2, 2021

We call for the mobilisation of more resources for resilience

In comments at the climate change conference, Mozambique could not ignore the extreme events that have devastated the nation. Do Rosário reminded those present at COP-26 that “we are a country on the route of extreme weather events that are occurring in a cyclical and increasingly frequent and more intense way, such as cyclones, floods, and droughts”. 

As an example, said the prime minister, Mozambique was affected in 2019 and 2020 by five cyclones, with cyclones Idai and Kenneth the most devastating. Those cyclones caused the loss of hundreds of human lives, affected more than 800,000 people and caused enormous social and economic damage estimated at more than US$3 billion. Carlos Agostinho do Rosário concluded that “given the frequency and intensity with which extreme weather events occur in our country, our approach is focused on prevention, adaptation, mitigation, resettlement of the population facing development, building resilient infrastructure as well as water resources management, as provided for in our updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which we launched yesterday [Monday] on the sidelines of this Summit”. For this approach to become a reality, “we call for the mobilization of more resources, the softening of the criteria for accessing them and the transfer of technology”, he said. Mozambique’s prime minister, Mr Carlos Agostinho do Rosário, in a press conference at the #LLAhub at @COP26 presenting the country’s NDCs @UNCDFLoCAL @GovernoDe #NDCs #climateaction #raisingambition #COP26 pic.twitter.com/kMCZe99HeN

— Rafael Moser (@rafamoser) November 2, 2021

The summit runs until the 12th of November, with the next 10 days set aside for technical meetings to fine-tune the details of the final Glasgow Agreement. Egypt has applied to host the COP-27, and Mozambique is supporting its candidacy.

 

Cursed

I heard, horrified, a profound practice that undermined the most elementary sense of human dignity, which took place around the construction of the Chongoene airport, in the Province of Gaza. During the program "Linha Directa", on RM, this Saturday, one of the participants, Carlos Mhula, was speaking representing the Gaza civil society association, had the following:

To make way for the construction of the aforementioned airport, around 400 families in the area were moved from there to other places. It was also necessary to eliminate family cemeteries, exhuming their mortal remains. It so happens that, instead of simply supporting the families to carry out these operations, which are deeply humanly sensitive, the government took it upon themselves to do so. For this purpose, small coffins were prepared, only doctors depositing the bones of the deceased. It happens, however, that some of these deceased received were recently buried and, therefore, their bodies are not yet incorporated into the totality.

And what did the agents appointed by the government services did: decide to cut these bodies into pieces, so that they could fit into the small boxes prepared for bones!

What ?!

Size is outrageous! More macabre... only on the part of the Cabo Delgado terrorists! Is it possible for Government service agents to act in such an inhumane, animalistic way?

According to Carlos Mhula, the families were asked to exhume the remains of their loved ones, which they would do, obeying their own rituals. Not having the means to have coffins made, some families would use mats, and with due dignity, they would bury them, again! But not!

And Mhula also informed that about 400 families removed from the place, where there were also their farms, never received any compensation or evaluation of any kind! And in a little while we're going to inaugurate that airport, with pomp and circumstance, and let's say that it means development.

"Development"... Whose? Or indignity?!

 

By T.V. Mário

HIDDEN DEBTS: SISE DIRECTOR UNDERMINES ROSARIO’S TESTIMONY

In less than an hour of questioning on Friday, a senior official in Mozambique’s Security and Intelligence Service (SISE) undid much of the ten days of testimony given by the former head of economic intelligence in SISE, Antonio Carlos do Rosario, at the trial in Maputo of 19 people facing charges in connection with Mozambique’s largest financial scandal, known as the case of the “hidden debts”.

Joia Haquirene, the first witness called in the case, is a National Director of Counter-Intelligence in SISE. Few people can know the security service better than Haquirene. He joined the service (then known as SNASP) in 1979, when he was just 17 years old and worked his way up.

In 2011, he became a founding partner owning 30 per cent of GIPS, the SISE company which went on to become a shareholder in the three fraudulent companies at the heart of the “hidden debts” case – Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management). But Haquirene claimed he knew next to nothing about those companies, even though Rosario had stressed how central they were supposed to be to Mozambican security. In December 2012, a general meeting of GIPS agreed to subscribe to the share capital of Proindicus. Haquirene thought nothing of it. “For me, this was always not very relevant”, he said. “I was just called on to sign the papers and I did so”.

He could not remember what the purpose of Proindicus was – “I was just following orders”, he said.

“Did you take part in the Proindicus viability study?”, asked prosecutor Sheila Marrengula, “No, I never saw it”, he replied.

Did he know anything about the Integrated Monitoring and Protection System (SIMP)? Haquirene said he had never heard of it.

SIMP was the justification for all three companies. Rosario had argued that SIMP was vital for Mozambican coastal security, and the protection of Mozambique’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Proindicus, Ematum and MAM were all part of SIMP. Yet here was a very senior SISE officer, of the same rank as Rosario (national director) who had never heard of SIMP, and did not regard the three companies as particularly significant for SISE work. All that Rosario had argued about the centrality of SIMP, and the vital nature of the three companies for Mozambican security, thus collapsed under a couple of minutes of Marrengula’s questioning.

Did he know anything about SISE “operational vehicles”?, the prosecutor asked. This was another term Haquirene had never come across before. “The only vehicles I know about are cars that drive along the streets”, he quipped. Yet Rosario had spoken at length about SISE’s use of “operational vehicles”, companies which SISE used, sometimes without their owners’ knowledge. Clearly this security hijacking of companies, which Rosario seemed to regard as everyday intelligence work, had never crossed Haquirene’s mind.

The main “operational vehicle” mentioned by Rosario was Txopela Investments, a company through which bribes from the Abu Dhabi based group Privinvest were channeled. But Haquirene knew nothing about Txopela. So if other senior SISE officials knew nothing of what Rosario was doing, could he really be said to have worked for Mozambican security at all? (Paul Fauvet)