Building of Mozambique-South Africa gas pipeline to start in March

Work on building a gas pipeline from the southern Mozambican Province of Inhambane to South African will start this month, and should take about two years, a government high official declared. At the same time, a unit to process natural gas is to be built at Temane, one of the two main gas fields in Inhambane, Arsenio Mabote, national director of coal and hydrocarbons in the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, told in Maputo.

The whole project, that is budgeted at about $ 1 bn, is being undertaken by the South African company Sasol, working together with Mozambique's publicly-owned National Hydrocarbons Company (ENH). Currently, the procurement phase is still under way, for the import of the equipment necessary for the undertaking. The ENH is setting up a series of subsidiary companies to take care of operational aspects of the project, said Mabote.