The Total-led Mozambique LNG project held, through electronic platforms, a seminar with more than 100 Mozambican companies to share business opportunities for the next 6 months and over. Representatives of the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME), National Institute of Petroleum (INP), National Hydrocarbons Company (ENH), Local Content Group and several Mozambican business associations also participated.
The opportunities were presented by 3 of the companies contracted by the project, namely CCS JV, the main consortium contracted for engineering, procurement and construction of the LNG facility (onshore), Van Oord, one of the main contractors for engineering, procurement, construction and installation of submarine systems (offshore) and Gabriel Couto, contracted for the construction of the Afungi airstrip.
The opportunities presented included, among others, the supply of goods and services in the areas of recruitment and training of human resources, construction, information technology, catering, transport, and health, safety and environment.
The Chairman of the INP, Carlos Zacarias, and the MIREME representative, Henrique Cossa, highlighted the importance of this type of seminars, emphasizing the need to make known the necessary requirements for national companies to access the business opportunities offered by the gas projects, as well as actions aimed at training and increasing the competitiveness of national companies.
In turn, the Country Chair of Total in Mozambique and Vice-President of the Mozambique LNG project, Ronan Bescond, stated: “This seminar, the twelfth we have held since April 2019, is part of our ongoing work to disseminate business opportunities and requirements to access them. We would like to have more and more Mozambican companies to participate in the Mozambique LNG project, as the development of local content is an integral part of our business model and responds to the priorities stated by the Government of Mozambique and other stakeholders”.
Ronan Bescond also stated that the project “will give quantifiable preference to Mozambican companies, but they must be competitive, fulfilling the requirements of the project in terms of planning, quality, quantity and cost. Therefore, whenever relevant, we encourage local companies to create the necessary partnerships with each other or with foreign companies to strengthen their competitive capacity, to successfully compete for the business opportunities provided by the project. Likewise, we expect foreign companies to commit and comply with the desire to maximize local content, as part of their activities in the country”.
According to Bescond, the project has already spent around US$ 699 million with more than 300 Mozambican companies, of which more than half are mostly Mozambican-owned.
The project expects to award contracts of around US$ 2.5 billion to Mozambican-owned companies or registered in Mozambique during the construction period. This award represents more than a third of our onshore contracts, with most of the remainder being used for the acquisition of highly specialized goods and technical services that currently cannot be acquired in Mozambique.”
