Japan’s Abe Eyes Mozambique’s Gas Reserves on Africa Visit

By Isabel Reynolds and Mike Cohen  Jan 10, 2014 9:52 AM GMT+0100 

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Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may seek to secure natural gas supplies from Mozambique during a three-nation African tour this week, the first visit to the continent by a Japanese leader in almost eight years.

Japan, the world’s biggest importer of liquefied natural gas, has been seeking new energy sources after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The world’s third-largest economy has been without nuclear power, which accounts for about a quarter of its energy needs, since September as all of the country’s 50 reactors have been shut pending safety reviews.

“Since the Fukushima accident, Japan’s imports of natural gas for electricity generation have risen enormously, including from Africa,” Katsumi Hirano, head researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies, an affiliate of the Japan External Trade Organization in Chiba Prefecture, said in a phone interview on Jan 8. “The development of natural gas is an extremely important matter for security and the national interest.”

Mozambique’s offshore fields may hold enough gas to meet global demand for more than two years, according to Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos, the national oil company.

The southern African nation, located on the east coast of Africa, plans to build four LNG units with a total capacity of 20 million metric tons a year by 2018, making it the largest LNG export site after Ras Laffan in Qatar. Chiyoda Corp. (6366), based in Yokohama, is among the companies bidding for contracts to construct the plants, which may cost $20 billion.

Coal Mine

Mitsui & Co. has a stake in the fields and Nippon Steel is developing a coal mine in the country, which is slated to start production in 2016.

Japan will also announce more than 60 billion yen ($572 million) in loans to Mozambique, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Jan. 6. The funds will be used to finance infrastructure projects including the construction of a transportation network that connects the country’s Nacala port to Malawi and Zambia, the paper said, without attribution.

Abe will arrive in Mozambique tomorrow after visiting Ivory Coast today, where he is scheduled to meet President Alassane Ouattara and other West African leaders. The Japanese premier will head to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Jan. 13 and will give a speech at the headquarters of the African Union the next day.

Business Delegation

The last visit by a Japanese leader to Africa took place in 2006, when then-Prime MinisterJunichiro Koizumi traveled to Ethiopia and Ghana.

Abe is the first Japanese prime minister to take a business delegation to Africa, reflecting a change in emphasis from aid to trade and investment that was the theme of an African summit in Japan in June. The delegation will include trading, natural resources and construction companies.

“Since 2000 onward, China’s engagement with Africa has re-energized everyone else looking at the continent,” Martyn Davies, chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based Frontier Advisory, which provides research on emerging markets, said in a Jan. 8 phone interview. “Undoubtedly the Japanese re-energized engagement should be seen in the context of countering the Chinese to an extent.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net; Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net

Mozambique leads gas boom

Mozambique leads gas boom

Posted DEZ 20 2013 by BLOGGER in ANGOLA, ENERGY, MOZAMBIQUE with Comentários Desligados

Angola has become the third country in sub-Saharan Africa to export liquefied natural gas (LNG), following in the footsteps of Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. Liquefied gas has already been exported from the Angola LNG plant to China, Japan and Brazil.

Feedstock is to be supplied to the facility from a large number of Angolan blocks and supplies have been received from BP’s Block 18, ExxonMobil’s Block 15 and Total’s Block 17. Angola LNG is owned by Chevron, with a 36.4% stake, state-owned Sonangol (22.8%), BP (13.6%), Eni (13.6%) and Total (13.6%).

However, the facility has been affected by a series of leaks and fires that have hit production. In addition, one person was killed when the drilling rig Perro Negro 6 capsized while laying a pipeline from Chevron fields to the LNG plant. The plant was closed down on 29th September for an expected 53 days of maintenance after just a handful of shipments had been produced. Production will now take longer than expected to be ramped up to full capacity, even when the maintenance work is completed. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to become a more important source of LNG supply over the next decade, as Mozambique and possibly Tanzania join the ranks of the producers. LNG is produced when natural gas is cooled sufficiently to turn it into a liquid that can be transferred on to ships for export around the world. Both liquefaction plants and the regasification plants needed in the importing country cost billions of dollars to construct and so projects are only developed when there is sufficient ring-fenced gas to supply schemes for a minimum of 20 years.

Mozambique will be particularly well placed to supply China and other Asian customers when its LNG project is completed. Consortia led by US firm Anadarko and Eni of Italy will supply gas to a single LNG project in the far north of Mozambique. The final contract on the scheme is expected to be signed by July next year, which the government hopes will be soon enough to enable gas exports from 2018.

Four LNG trains, or production lines, are planned in the first instance, with up to 10 in the longer term, which would provide total annual production capacity of 50m tonnes, making Mozambique one of the world’s biggest LNG producers.There seems little doubt that the venture will proceed, as Anadarko has announced that it is already in talks with 20 different customers and expects to announce sales agreements late this year and in early 2014.

Recent exploration wells have uncovered more gas, including an estimated 5-7 trillion cu ft on Eni’s Agulha Field, on top of the Italian firm’s previous estimate of 80 trillion cu ft on its acreage. Eni chief executive Paolo Scaroni said of Agulha: “It is a completely new play. While it’s not that exciting to find more gas in Mozambique, because so much has been discovered already, it really is exciting to find a new play, in which we can see the potential for wet gas. This might lead to more gas, more condensate and more oil.” Danger of oversupply? Some analysts fear that the global market for LNG could be oversupplied by a combination of a string of new projects in Australia, weak demand in the EU and the shale gas boom in North America. However, China and India are both expected to greatly increase their LNG imports in the near future, while renewed demand is forecast in Japan and South Korea as Tokyo and Seoul seek to reduce their reliance on nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The big impetus, however, could come from new air quality regulations in China. The Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan 2013-17, which was published in September, requires the government to reduce the proportion of coal in its energy mix to less than 65% by 2017 and to steadily fall thereafter. In terms of its impact on Africa, it could affect the pace of development of the Mozambican coal industry because China now accounts for just over half of global coal demand.

However, it should also increase demand for African LNG. Some of China’s more modern coal-fired plants are to be converted to operate on gas feedstock, while the proportion of gas in the energy mix is expected to increase from 5% in 2011 to 7.5% as soon as 2015.

According to the 12th Five Year Plan on Energy Development 2011–15, the country’s LNG import capacity should exceed 50m tonnes a year by 2015 and could double within another decade, as Beijing seeks to create a diverse range of gas suppliers.

African Business

Eptisa participará en un proyecto de cartografía territorial en Mozambique

Eptisa participará en un proyecto de cartografía territorial en Mozambique

Apoyo al Centro Nacional de Cartografía y Telecomunicaciones  Eptisa 18 de diciembre de 2013 Eptisa se ha adjudicado un proyecto destinado a fortalecer las capacidades institucionales del Centro Nacional de Cartografía y Telecomunicaciones de Mozambique (Cenacarta), que está a cargo de la recopilación, almacenamiento y procesamiento de la cartografía y las imágenes de satélite en el país. El fortalecimiento institucional se realizará a través de la adquisición de equipos modernos y la formación sobre transferencia tecnológica a nivel nacional, así como la creación de una base de datos georreferenciada para producir cartografía topográfica a escala 1:25.000 y la actualización de la cartografía existente a 1:50.000. El proyecto, con una duración de 14 meses, busca cubrir las necesidades de diferentes sectores del país: catastro, agricultura, infraestructuras del transporte, sistemas de información geográfica, energía y telecomunicaciones, entre otros. El proyecto estará dividido en tres fases. La fase piloto consistirá en la adquisición de equipos, software e imágenes de satélite, el inicio de la producción cartográfica, la transferencia de tecnología y la formación y las pruebas de la metodología propuesta. La fase de producción incluye la ampliación de la producción cartográfica a otras localidades distintas a las zonas piloto en Mozambique, y la asunción de responsabilidades en el proceso de producción por parte del personal del cliente. Finalmente, el proyecto concluirá con la fase de consolidación.

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15 de Outubro de 2014 é a data das eleições Gerais em Moçambique

Escrito por AIM

inShare O Presidente moçambicano, Armando Guebuza, marcou a data para a realização das eleições gerais, presidenciais  e legislativas, bem como para as assembleias provinciais para 15 de Outubro de 2014, em todo o território  nacional e, no estrangeiro, para 12 de Outubro de 2014. A decisão foi dada a conhecer através de um comunicado de imprensa emitido, hoje, pelo Gabinete de Imprensa  da Presidência da República. O documento diz ainda que as eleições realizar-se-ão, simultaneamente, num único dia, em todo o país. O comunicado refere que a data proposta pela Comissão Nacional de Eleições (CNE) é a melhor possível,  nos termos da lei.