The Mozambican government and the South African petro-chemical company Sasol on Monday announced an investment of 760 million US dollars in the Temane Natural Gas Project in the southern province of Inhambane.

This follows Sasol’s Final Investment Decision, taken last Friday, for the development of the additional natural gas reservoirs, in the vicinity of the Temane and Inhassoro fields that Sasol is already operating.

A press release from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and energy says that “the investment approved implements the government’s strategy for the transformation of the natural gas and the addition of value inside Mozambique to speed up the economic development and industrialization of our country”.

The investment will allow the annual production of 23 million gigajoules of natural gas, which will be used to produce 30,000 tonnes of LPG cooking gas a year. This will dramatically reduce Mozambique’s need to import cooking gas. The Ministry release says the Sasol project will cut Mozambique’s LPG imports by 75 per cent.

Encouraging Mozambican consumers to use locally produced LPG for cooking will reduce demand for firewood and charcoal, and thus ease the pressure on Mozambican forests, currently threatened by deforestation.

The project will also allow the generation of 450 megawatts of electricity at the Temane combined cycle power station, which will be injected into the national grid operated by the publicly owned electricity company, EDM.

Sasol will also produce 4,000 barrels of light oil a day for export.

Construction of the new natural gas production infrastructures should begin in July. 3,000 Mozambicans will be employed directly and the project is expected to create many thousands of indirect jobs over the next decade.Source: AIM