The Coral South floating platform for the production of liquefied natural gas (FLNG), in the Rovuma Basin, employs over 100 Mozambicans, the project’s managing director, Giorgio Vicini, announced last week.
The project is located about 30 kilometres off the coast of Palma district, in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.
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Addressing a Forum on Energy Transition and Industrialization, in Maputo, Vicini said “The presence of Mozambicans is a great sign for the extension of the FLNG project, as well as for the development of the communities”.
On the energy transition, Vicini believes it is of vital importance for the development of the floating project, and plans can be designed with the support of local communities, including Mozambican and Italian companies contributing to the process.
“This is the spirit of our Enrico Mattei [Eni’s founder and a leading ‘partigiano’ fighter and commander in the Italian anti-fascist resistance ] who once upon a time taught us this modality of operating side by side with the communities”, he stressed.
Thanks to the attribution of scholarships, according to Vicini, Mozambican specialists have already been trained to operate on the platform and they are able to transmit their knowledge to other Mozambicans, as well as other Africans with similar projects.
The FLNG’s goal is to directly train about 800 Mozambicans by 2037, after 15 years of operations.
The training is based on two pillars, the first being in Oil and Gas, which will be carried out with in-house skills, in collaboration with Mozambican and international universities, to meet the specific needs of the Project.
The second pillar focuses on vocational training, to be carried out in cooperation with Mozambican vocational training institutions.
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To implement the training plans, the Italian energy company, ENI, which is the operator of the floating platform, has designed three programmes, to train at least 200 Mozambicans in Economics, Health Sciences, Biology, Chemical Engineering, Information and Communication Technology, and Law in subjects related to the mineral resources industry.
The first phase of the programme ran from 2012 to 2018 and trained 149 Mozambicans, and the second phase is ongoing, but was interrupted due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Organized by the Mozambique-Italy Chamber of Commerce, Mozambican and Italian businesspeople, mainly from the oil and gas industry, participated in the Maputo Forum.
