The Italian energy company, ENI, is preparing to build and launch a second floating platform to extract natural gas from the depths of the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.
According to a report published by the Zitamar news agency, the platform will be known as Coral North and will be a duplicate of the Coral South platform, which is already pumping, liquefying, and exporting natural gas.
The consortium headed by ENI, in a pre-viability environmental study cited by Zitamar, declared that a second floating platform would be "the most efficient way to maximise the recovery and profitability of the gas reserves of the Coral field".
The investment envisaged in the second platform is US$7 billion and is still subject to approval by the Mozambican government. Under the current calendar, the new platform would begin to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the second half of 2027.
That means that the platform will be in production before the on-shore LNG plants planned for the Afungi peninsula in Palma district. The French oil and gas company, TotalEnergies, stopped work at Afungi and declared force majeure in 2021, because of attacks by islamist terrorists. The resumption of work by Total will depend on whether the French company is satisfied with the recent improvements in the security situation.
Coral North will be anchored ten kilometres from the Coral South platform which has been liquefying natural gas since October 2022. From then until May of this year the Coral South LNG exports have channelled US$34 million in revenue to the state coffers.
The platform has the capacity to produce 3.37 million tonnes of LNG a year and the Coral North platform would double that figure.
The main partner in the consortium is Mozambique Rovuma Venture (MRV) which is a joint venture owned by ENI, ExxonMobil and CNODC of China. MRV has a 70 per cent stake in Area Four of the Rovuma Basin. The other partners are Mozambique's own National Hydrocarbon Company (ENH), Galp of Portugal and Kogas of South Korea, each with ten per cent.
