European public financiers stepped back from the country’s flagship LNG developments, and European scrutiny of the security situation in the north ran well ahead of any enthusiasm for the resource. Last month, the tone from Brussels sounded notably different.
During a working visit to Maputo, the European External Action Service‘s Director-General for Africa, Patrícia Llombart, described Mozambique’s natural gas as a key element of Europe’s energy diversification and made the case for a partnership built on mutual benefit. In an interview with the Portuguese news agency Lusa, she said Brussels was following the LNG developments in Cabo Delgado “with great interest” and saw significant long-term potential as security conditions improve and investment resumes. Two of those developments are led by European majors, Italy’s ENI and France’s TotalEnergies, among the largest gas discoveries of recent decades as reported by Lusa news agency.
The significance lies less in the substance — Mozambique’s reserves have ranked among Africa’s largest for over a decade — than in the timing. Brussels has not historically gone out of its way to champion these projects. That it is doing so now points to a change in Europe’s own position as much as in Mozambique’s.
The context is an energy market Europe no longer takes for granted. This year’s conflict around the Strait of Hormuz, and the damage to Gulf LNG infrastructure that followed, delivered what the International Energy Agency has described as the largest supply disruption in the history of the oil market, alongside a lasting dent in global LNG supply growth. Even with a ceasefire in place, European storage entered the year low and the Commission has urged early refilling. The takeaway for policymakers is a familiar one, freshly sharpened: security of supply cannot be assumed.
Seen that way, Mozambique’s appeal is straightforward — substantial, long-dated volumes outside the Gulf and outside Russia, developed in large part by European companies. As reported by Lusa, Llombart framed the investments as clearly in the common interest of both Europe and Mozambique, and cast the relationship as a long-term partnership grounded in Mozambican sovereignty rather than a contest for access. Her visit also carried a security dimension, with structured consultations on Cabo Delgado announced alongside the energy message.
For Mozambique, the shift matters less for any single project than for the frame: the country is being spoken of, from Brussels, as a prospective long-term energy partner. Europe has remembered why Mozambique’s gas matters — prompted, as much as anything, by a crisis of its own.
