The oil company Anadarko announced on Tuesday that it is seeking proposals for the provision of a Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) for well construction off the north coast of Mozambique. (Click HERE for the full text)

“The well completion and construction program will last approximately three years for the first phase of field development” of  Area 1 (Golfinho-Atum and Prosperidade fields), Anadarko, which leads the concessionaire consortium, announced on Tuesday in the Mozambican newspaper Notícias.

The company invites interested parties to present, by the end of the week, expressions of interest to supply a Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit, and will then choose a company “with appropriate experience and competence” in deep-water drilling.

“The Golfinho-Atum field is a deep-water field, located approximately 50 kilometres off the coast of Mozambique, with water depths up to 1,200 metres,” the announcement details.

The sea-bed wells deploy platforms and are connected to each other by pipelines which lead the gas to the land-based liquefaction plant, according to the project outline published last year by Anadarko.

As is usual in this type of investment, today’s announcement is published before the consortium finalises its Area 1 final investment decision, which will in turn mark the beginning of the countdown for the extraction of raw material.

At the same time, a number of infrastructure projects have been progressing for about a year on the Afungi peninsula, where the gas liquefaction plant and export dock for special cargo ships are being built.

The Mozambique liquid natural gas (LNG) project operated by Anadarko will be the first to be developed onshore in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. The plant will initially consist of two modules capable of producing 12.88 million tons of LNG per year, destined for export.

President of the Mozambican National Hydrocarbons Company Omar Mithá announced on Sunday at a conference in New Delhi, India, that the Andarko consortium’s Area 1 final investment decision is due by the end of April, and that, in July, the consortium led by Eni and Exxon Mobil, which operates the adjacent Area 4, will announce its investment in the Mamba field.

The Area 4 consortium – the Rovuma LNG project – will begin to extract gas off the northern coast of Mozambique in 2022 using a floating platform.Source: Lusa