Total suspends gas projects in Mozambique due to jihadist siege

The French company Total has decided to suspend the million-dollar gas project it planned to resume next week in northern Mozambique because of attacks in the area by the jihadist group Al-Shabaab, which has been maintaining a bloody siege on the Mozambican city of Palma since Wednesday.

"The resumption of the project that was scheduled for the beginning of the week is obviously now suspended," the French oil company said in a statement on Saturday night, referring to its plans to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Mozambique's Afungi peninsula near Palma.

Total also said there were no casualties among its Afungi team and said it had reduced the workforce in the area to a minimum. Meanwhile, the situation remains critical in Palma, located only a few kilometres from Afungi.

As of Saturday, at least seven people had been confirmed dead in the Al-Shabaab incursion, but the real severity of what is happening in the town is still unknown as Mozambican security forces are still struggling to regain control of the city.

The city was home to many foreigners working on gas projects in the area.

On Friday, at least part of a group of 170 civilians who had taken refuge in a hotel in Palma to resist the siege tried to escape and were ambushed by jihadists.

About a hundred people from that escape survived and managed to reach the coast, under the cover of the Mozambican Defence and Security Forces, and took refuge in the fortified installations of Total, according to workers in the area.

Among the foreigners trapped in Palma was a Spanish citizen who managed to escape and is safe, having been transferred to the city of Pemba, sources from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation confirmed to Efe on Saturday.

Despite the little information that is known, local media say that there could be dozens dead and that the city is being destroyed by the terrorists.

The attack on Palma came just hours after the government of Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi and Total announced that they would "soon resume construction activities in Afungi with the implementation of additional security measures".

Since December 2020, the construction of various infrastructures needed to exploit the existing natural gas in the area has been interrupted due to Al-Shabaab attacks on sites near the project.

Total's initiative to build a natural gas liquefaction plant with a capacity of 13.1 million tonnes per year had secured financing of $14.9 billion, the company announced last July.

The LNG Project represents a total investment of $20bn and will involve the erection of an onshore plant with two natural gas liquefaction trains for the Golfinho and Atum fields of the Area 1 offshore concession.

Al-Shabaab, which is unrelated to the eponymous jihadist group in Somalia, has been terrorising northern Mozambique since 2017 and has so far caused thousands of deaths and nearly 700,000 displaced citizens.

The humanitarian crisis in Mozambique is growing as jihadists burn entire villages, behead people, including minors, and commit other crimes, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned on the 22nd.

The US recently designated Al-Shabaab as an "international terrorist organisation" affiliated with Daesh.