The floating platform that will be used in the production of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from the Coral Sul gas field off the coast of the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado is now in place and safely moored.
According to the contractor for the mooring and hooking up operation, Petrolis, the work was completed on 4 March following the tensioning of the twenty mooring lines.
In a statement released on Monday, the company noted that “our team has now successfully and safely completed the mooring activities” and added that pre-commissioning activities are planned to continue until June 2022.
The company revealed that to carry out the operation it deployed a crew of 44 people including engineers, managers, technicians, and other essential staff.
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The platform reached Mozambican waters on 3 January after a lengthy voyage from South Korea, where it was built. It will now be connected to the production lines after which the process of testing all of the equipment and licensing the plant will be carried out.
The Coral Sul project is owned by a consortium headed by the Italian energy company, ENI, and is due to begin operating in the second half of this year with a production capacity of 3.4 million metric tonnes of LNG per year, all of which has been secured by British Petroleum (BP) through a long term contract.
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It lies within the Rovuma Basin Area Four concession and will be the first project to produce LNG in Mozambique. The main participant in Area Four is Mozambique Rovuma Ventures, a partnership between ENI, the US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which together control 70 per cent of the undertaking. The remaining 30 per cent is divided equally between the Mozambican state enterprise ENH, Galp Energia of Portugal, and Kogas of South Korea.
