As if by Magic
Following up on my post in the last hour it seems Tanzania is ready to roll...
TANZANIA has temporarily suspended negotiations over Host
Government Agreements (HGAs) with international oil companies for development
of liquefied natural gas (LNG) project pending review of Production Sharing
Agreements with oil firms.
Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) Managing
Director Dr James
Mataragio said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the government
wanted to harmonise the HGAs with existing production sharing agreements
(PSAs), which allowed foreign oil firms to undertake exploration, development
and production activities in oil and gas industry
“We have temporarily
suspended HGAs negotiations pending completion of PSA review. We thought that
it makes sense to finish PSA review before continuing with HGAs,” he told the
‘Daily News’ on the side-line of the third oil and gas congress.
Tanzania is expecting to add 5.2 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas to raise estimates reserves of natural gas to over 62 trillion
cubic feet. A consortium of international oil companies are expected to start
building a long delayed LNG project in 2022, the Minister of Energy, Dr Medard
Kalemani told the national assembly in Dodoma last May.
Equinor, alongside Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil and Ophir
Energy and Pavilion Energy, plan to build the onshore LNG plant in Lindi
region.
Dr Mataragio said there were some issues that came up during
the review of the existing PSAs that made a complete review necessary prior to
continuing with the HGA negotiations with international oil firms that have
expressed interest to investing the LNG project.
He, however, would not go into details on the issues but
noted that the temporary suspension will not take long as for the time being
the review of the agreements was in final stages.
“It won’t take long
because for the time being they are wrapping up the (PSA) review,” he said.
“There are some issues which need to be resolved but without
going into details, we hope to wrap up the review any time from now.”
Source: dailynews tz