Mozambique’s Minister of Mineral Resources, Esperanca Bias, on Thursday denied opposition claims that Mozambique gains no benefit from the natural gas extracted from the Pande and Temane fields in Inhambane province, because it is all exported to South Africa.Speaking in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Bias declared “we will continue to export gas, which brings foreign exchange to our country”. But it was quite untrue that none of the gas is used in Mozambique – currently three million gigajoules a year of the gas is consumed inside the country. Some of this gas generates electricity for districts in the northern part of Inhambane province and the southern part of Sofala.There is also a spur running from the main gas pipeline to South Africa, and this spur takes the gas to industries in the city of Matola, where it has replaced imported liquid fuels. There are also plans to pipe the gas to households in Maputo and Matola.Deputies from the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, thought it was absurd that Mozambique is exporting natural gas but at the same time the country is experiencing a critical shortage of cooking gas.But the gas used for cooking is Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), and currently there is no factory in Mozambique that can turn the gas extracted from Pande and Temane into LNG. Mozambique thus imports its LNG from South African refineries under a contract with the South African fuel company Engen. Since 13 October, when there was a fire in its Durban refinery, Engen has been unable to honour its contract.There are plans to build facilities to liquefy the natural gas discovered in vast quantities in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado. But Bias warned that, since these discoveries are recent, the investment in LNG plants will take time and production cannot be expected before 2018.Renamo deputy Gania Mussagy claimed that the electricity generated from the Inhambane gas is more expensive than electricity elsewhere in the country, and that consumers in Vilankulo had thus stopped buying it.But a deputy of the ruling Frelimo Party from Inhambane, Sara Mamude, said this was quite untrue since the price per kilowatt-hour of electricity is the same in Vilankulo as everywhere else in the country.Mussagy was four years out of date. Initially the private company ENMO sold the electricity in Vilankulo and neighbouring districts, and it did indeed charge extortionate prices. But there were so many complaints against ENMO’s performance that the government cancelled its concession in October 2007, and handed the rights to distribute the power generated by gas to the publicly owned electricity company, EDM, which has a policy of uniform electricity tariffs across the country.As for claims that Mozambicans are not benefitting from the country’s mineral resources, Bias said that mining is creating jobs, not only in the extractive industries themselves, but also in upstream and downstream activities. The best example of this is that the western city of Tete has become a boom town, thanks to the huge open cast coal mines under development in the nearby district of Moatize.Mining in Tete, Bias added, now employs about 13,300 workers, the great majority of whom are Mozambicans. The full impact of the mining projects was yet to be felt, she added, since they were very recent. Until May of this year, only one small, underground coal mine was operating in Tete. This mine, Chipanga 11, owned by the company Minas de Moatize, only produced 30,000 tonnes of coal a year.
But as from May the Brazilian mining giant Vale started producing coal at its Moatize mine, and made its first exports in September. An adjacent mine run by the company Rio Tinto is now in production and is expected to start exporting coal by the end of the year. The opposition also demands transparency in the allocation of mining licences. Bias replied that applicants receive licences in line with the legal requirements, and that all licences are published in the main daily paper, “Noticias”. The mining register, with the locations of all exploration licences and mining concessions, is a public document, she said, and anyone may consult it.Illegal mining was a matter of concern to the government, Bias said, and over the past year seven tonnes of assorted minerals had been seized from illegal miners, along with their equipment, which all reverts to the state.Mussagy had claimed that the government intervened to stop mining companies from increasing their wages. Bias challenged Mussagy to name these companies, but she failed to do so.In reality, the government cannot order private companies to pay higher or lower wages. The government merely sets the statutory minimum wage – wages above the minimum are a matter for negotiation between employers and their workers.
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