Mozambique’s Gas Reserves Could Reach 250 Trillion Cubic Feet

Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique, image courtesy Spot Image S.A, all rights reserved

April 10 (Bloomberg) — Tanzania sees natural-gas reserves more than doubling by early 2015 from the 40 trillion cubic feet discovered by companies including Statoil ASA, as the country prepares to offer new exploration blocks as early as September.

“We have enormous amounts of gas,” Energy and Minerals Minister Sospeter Muhongo said in an interview yesterday in Oslo. “We are now at 40 tcf and I’m sure in the next two years we should be at more than a 100 tcf.”

Statoil, Norway’s biggest energy company, last month raised estimates for discoveries in Tanzania’s Block 2 to as much as 13 trillion cubic feet of recoverable resources, enough to build a liquefied natural gas plant with Britain’s BG Group Plc. The U.K. company has found 10 trillion cubic feet in neighboring blocks. Statoil said drilling on two to three new prospects may yield “high-impact” finds in 2013, defined as discoveries with reserves of more than 250 million barrels of oil equivalent.

More than 100 trillion cubic feet have been found in the area including neighbouring Mozambique, where Eni SpA made the biggest gas discovery of the decade. Mozambique may have 250 trillion cubic feet of reserves, according to the country’s state-backed company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos.

Tanzania will offer exploration permits between September and November, Muhongo said, after the country delayed a planned licensing round for nine blocks in September last year. Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp. will decide on a date for the round, he said, without giving the number of blocks to be awarded.

– Mikael Holter, Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

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