On 29 January 2026 Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive of TotalEnergies, met President Daniel Chapo at Afungi in Cabo Delgado province and announced the full restart of the Mozambique LNG project, onshore and offshore. It followed the partners' announcement in late October 2025 that they would lift the force majeure declared in 2021, formalised by a consortium decision on 7 November, when an insurgent attack on the nearby town of Palma forced the evacuation of the site. TotalEnergies said more than 4,000 workers were now mobilised, over 3,000 of them Mozambican, that the project was about 40 per cent complete and that almost all engineering and procurement of main equipment had been carried out during the force majeure period. First LNG is expected in 2029.
Mozambique LNG is one of the largest private investments in Africa, reported at around USD 20 billion. TotalEnergies operates it with a 26.5 per cent stake, alongside Mitsui, the Mozambican state company ENH, ONGC Videsh, Beas Rovuma, BPRL and PTTEP. Our view is that the restart is a sound commercial decision and a significant moment for Mozambique, but that the project's long-term value depends on the security arrangement in Cabo Delgado and on whether the province's people see benefits. The gas price outlook matters less than whether the conditions that caused the 2021 shutdown have truly changed.
Why the restart makes commercial sense now
The partners have carried much of the cost of the delay already. With engineering and major equipment procurement largely done, the remaining work is construction and commissioning. Restarting allows the consortium to bring an asset with a large resource base to market before the end of the decade. Mozambique's offshore Rovuma basin gas is close to Asian and European markets compared with some competing supply, and long-term buyers had already been lined up before the shutdown.
The global LNG market is expected to be well supplied in the second half of the 2020s, as large expansions in Qatar and the United States come online. That creates price risk for any project starting in 2029. But Mozambique LNG is a long-life asset, and its partners include Asian buyers whose interest is in secure supply over decades rather than the price in any single year. For them, diversity of supply from outside the Gulf and the United States has strategic value.
The security question
The shutdown in 2021 was caused by the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, which has been active since 2017. Rwandan troops deployed in 2021, alongside forces from the Southern African Development Community, pushed insurgents out of the main towns near Afungi. Attacks have continued in other parts of the province. TotalEnergies said the Mozambican government had confirmed all the measures taken to address security and the continued cooperation with Rwanda.
That cooperation is the foundation of the restart. It also creates a dependence. The security of a USD 20 billion project rests in large part on the presence of a foreign military force whose mandate and funding are a matter of diplomacy between Kigali, Maputo and, indirectly, the investors and their home governments. If that arrangement weakens, the project's risk rises sharply. Investors and lenders should treat the durability of the Rwandan deployment as a central project risk and the Mozambican government should be working to build the capacity of its own forces so that the dependence diminishes over time.
The social contract in Cabo Delgado
The insurgency did not come from nowhere. Cabo Delgado is one of Mozambique's poorest provinces, and grievances over land, unemployment and the sense that gas and ruby wealth would bypass local people fed recruitment. A secure project requires a population that sees itself as gaining from it. TotalEnergies points to its local content plan, which it says will provide up to 7,000 direct jobs for Mozambicans during construction and more than USD 4 billion in contracts to Mozambican companies, and to the Mozambique LNG Foundation, set up in 2023 with a budget of USD 200 million.
These commitments are welcome, but their credibility will depend on delivery and on visibility in the province itself rather than in Maputo. The project has also faced scrutiny over the treatment of civilians during the 2021 events and over how displaced communities have been resettled and compensated. Transparent handling of those issues is not only a reputational matter. It is part of the security strategy.
There is also a cost question. Five years of force majeure meant standby costs, contract renegotiations with suppliers and a rebuilt security perimeter. How those costs are recovered matters to Mozambique, because capital costs recovered from production reduce the state's share of early revenue. The government should insist on clear disclosure of which force majeure costs will be treated as recoverable, so that the public understands why early fiscal receipts may be lower than headline project values suggest.
What the revenue means for Mozambique
Mozambique is already an LNG exporter through the Coral South floating LNG project operated by Eni, which began production in 2022. Mozambique LNG would add far larger volumes. The fiscal impact, once production starts and capital costs are recovered, could transform government revenues. Mozambique has a history of debt problems, including the hidden debt scandal of the last decade, so the management of future gas revenue is a serious concern. Parliament approved legislation for a sovereign wealth fund for natural gas revenues at the end of 2023. Using it rigorously, and publishing what flows in and out, would help the country avoid repeating past mistakes.
Our assessment
The restart of Mozambique LNG is the right decision for its partners and an important one for Mozambique. The work done during the force majeure period means the project can move quickly to completion. But the most important variables are not commercial. They are the durability of the security arrangement with Rwanda, the extent to which Cabo Delgado's people share in the benefits, and the discipline with which Maputo manages future revenue. If those hold, Mozambique can become a major LNG exporter by the end of the decade. If they do not, the project will again be exposed to the same risks that halted it in 2021.