Italy’s ENI oil group has asked interested companies to submit proposals for the construction of a floating plant to process liquefied natural gas extracted in Mozambique, indicates the respective announcement published on Tuesday in the Mozambican press.

The Italian group is seeking expressions of interest in a “project to develop a Mozambican offshore field” and aims to select a company able to produce a front-end engineering design (FEED) for a floating platform and eventual future phases involving engineering, acquisition, construction and installation, as well as operation and maintenance services.

The floating platform will be anchored offshore in the Palma district. The announcement indicates it will “receive, process until liquefaction, and store liquefied natural gas produced from underwater wells and later unload it in transport ships for export.”

The ENI group is the operator in the Area 4 bloc of the Rovuma Basin off the shore of Cabo Delgado, where huge natural gas deposits have been discovered, with estimated reserves of more than 180 billion cubic feet.

A previously mentioned possibility was that the Italian group and the US company Anadarko Petroleum, which operates the adjacent Area 1 bloc, might share the costs of building liquefied natural gas plants on land, a project with an estimated cost of US$18 billion.