Welcome to Zitamar’s daily Mozambique briefing for 29 May, 2018.
Agenda
- Today: Workshop on the management of natural resource revenue – organised by Counterpart International, at the Radisson Blu hotel in Maputo
- Today: The head of the Mozambican police force, Bernardino Rafael, leads a delegation to a Southern Africa police meeting in Luanda, Angola
The latest from Zitamar News:
Tongaat Hulett’s Mozambique profits almost halve
Profits at the sugar producer have fallen in spite of rising production – but it plans to increase production still further this year with a new refinery
The best of the rest:
- Insurgents behead civilians in Palma, Cabo Delgado
- Trinidad & Tobago to share gas development expertise with Mozambique
- Mozambique aims to agree new offshore exploration terms this year
- More than 2,000 hectares of rice lost in Gaza due to drought
- Police caught trafficking ivory
Insurgents behead civilians in Palma, Cabo Delgado (TVM, Mediafax, Lusa)
Up to ten people have been beheaded by insurgents in the district of Palma, Cabo Delgado, on Sunday or Monday, according to reports from national broadcaster TVM, Portuguese news agency Lusa, and Mozambican daily Mediafax. A WhatsApp message reached Zitamar yesterday claiming that five people had been beheaded in the village of Olumbi, and two others elsewhere in Palma. TVM’s report put the total figure at ten, including two children. Mediafax said the chief of Olumbi village (also spelt Olumbe, Olombe, and Ulumbe) was killed.
Lusa tried and failed to get official confirmation from the police, but we are hoping to hear more at the police force’s weekly press conference which is scheduled to be held this afternoon in Maputo.
Trinidad & Tobago to share gas development expertise with Mozambique (Trinidad & Tobago Guardian)
Mozambique’s national oil and gas company, ENH, has signed a wide-ranging technical services agreement (TSA) with its equivalent in the gas-rich Caribbean archipelago nation of Trinidad & Tobago. Under the TSA, T&T’s National Gas Company (NGC) will sell technical, commercial, legal and other services to ENH, including assessing the commercial framework for the upstream, midstream (LNG and pipeline network) and domestic sectors, as well as local content policy formulation, institutional capacity building, infrastructure and industrial estate development. A joint steering committee will also be established to pursue potential projects identified by both parties.
Trinidad & Tobago is not a bad role model for how Mozambique might pursue gas-led development. It has a relatively successful sovereign wealth fund and has developed a downstream industry based on gas. Former central bank governor Ewart Williams prepared this short presentation in 2013 on what lessons Mozambique might learn from Trinidad & Tobago’s experience. Trinidad & Tobago’s reserves are now running out – and this TSA with Mozambique is as a way of the NGC finding a new source of revenue.
Mozambique aims to agree new offshore exploration terms this year (Tass)
Mozambique is aiming to sign an agreement with the Rosneft-ExxonMobil joint venture to explore potential oil and gas fields in the Angoche River Basin and the Zambezi River Delta by the end of 2018, Mozambique’s foreign minister Jose Pacheco said following talks with his opposite number, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow yesterday.
Negotiations are dragging on between oil and gas regulator INP and the various winners of the fields awarded under the 5th round in October 2015. Off the record, the Mozambican authorities blame ExxonMobil’s heavy-handed approach to negotiations for the delay in reaching exploration and production concession agreements. Now that Exxon has also taken on the Area 4 LNG project, they and the government will have to reach a modus operandi – which both sides are finding harder than expected, Zitamar understands.
More than 2,000 hectares of rice lost in Gaza due to drought (Rádio Moçambique)
A lack of rain has ruined the equivalent of 150 tonnes of rice in the district of Manjacaze, Gaza province – half of the total area sowed in the district, and affecting more than 1,500 families.
Police caught trafficking ivory (Notícias)
Three officers of the national criminal investigation service (Serviço Nacional de Investigação Criminal, SERNIC) have been detained in Niassa after being accused of diverting 105 elephant tusks between April 2016 and April 2017, which ended up being confiscated in Cambodia.
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