South Korea is dispatching a patrol vessel to Mozambique to provide security for the Coral Sul Floating Liquefied Natural Gas platform from the Coral South reservoir offshore Mozambique.
The platform is anchored in Area 4 of the Rovuma Basin, some 40 kilometres off the coast of Cabo Delgado province.
This is the first deep-water platform in the world to operate at a water depth of about 2,000 metres.
According to the daily paper Noticias, the vessel’s deployment was announced by the South Korean president’s special envoy, Byoung-Gug Choung, shortly after an audience granted by the Mozambican Head of State, Filipe Nyusi, in Nairobi where he attended the swearing-in ceremony of the Kenyan President-elect, William Ruto.
Byoung-Gug Choung added that the vessel would also provide maintenance and operation of the platform.
The floating platform, which was manufactured in South Korea, arrived in Mozambique last January. It is the most advanced in the world in terms of the production of liquefied natural gas.
Once fully operational, the terminal will produce 3.4 million tonnes of LNG per year. All of its output over the next 20 years has been bought by BP.
The Coral South project will be the first of three projects to produce LNG in Mozambique.
The main participant in Area 4 is Mozambique Rovuma Ventures, a partnership between ENI, the US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which together control 70 per cent of the undertaking.
The remaining 30 per cent is divided equally between the Mozambican state hydrocarbon enterprise ENH, Galp Energia of Portugal, and Kogas of South Korea.
