From a News Blurb — Reporting by Emma Rumney

FILE PHOTO: The logo of French oil giant Total is pictured at a petrol station in Laplume, France January 16, 2020.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – French oil major Total has secured $15.8 billion in funding for its massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in northern Mozambique, according to South African lender FirstRand’s local unit, FNB Mozambique.

Total declined to comment.

In a press release published on Wednesday, FNB Mozambique said the financing contracts for Total’s blockbuster development had been signed on Friday. While this was widely reported in local media at the time, Total has not confirmed the signing.

“FNB… intends to enter other large natural gas projects in Mozambique, just as it entered into Total’s financing, in a consortium of 20 banking institutions that granted $15.8 billion, for which the last contracts were signed last Friday,” it said.

FirstRand’s corporate and investment banking unit, Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), has previously said it was part of the consortium.

The project, Mozambique LNG, is one of several being developed in the country’s extreme north following one of the largest gas finds in a decade off its coast.

Reporting by Emma Rumney in Johannesburg, Manuel Mucari in Maputo and Bate Felix in Paris; Additional reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Jan Harvey.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-total-mozambique-lng/total-secures-15-8-billion-in-funding-for-mozambique-gas-project-fnb-idUSKBN2492XJ

“The signing of the Phase 1 deal would represent a welcome, even if modest, de-escalation of trade hostilities between China and the U.S. But it hardly addresses in any substantive way the fundamental sources of trade and economic tensions between the two sides, which will continue to fester.’’

Eswar Prasad, the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division, on the new trade agreement between the U.S. and China.

From RigZone, January 16, 2020

Commenting on the phase one trade deal, Wood Mackenzie Asia Pacific Vice Chair Gavin Thompson said, “from an energy perspective, what is most notable is China’s agreement to increase energy imports from the U.S. by up to $52.4 billion over the next two years”. Thompson emphasized that $52.4 billion over two years is “a lot” of energy but highlighted that it is going to be “challenging” for China to massively increase imports of oil and LNG from the U.S. while tariffs remain in place.

“Consider LNG. In 2017, China imports from U.S. were approximately 1.5 Mt, worth around $0.6 billion. If China is to increase the value of U.S. LNG imports considerably as a part of this agreement, let’s say to around 10 Mt in 2021, then the 25 percent tariff would need to be either absorbed by the importing company, or passed through to the consumer,” Thompson stated. “We expect that Chinese national oil companies will be reluctant to commit to large-scale purchases given this.

At the same time, the next two years will also see a slower pace of gas demand growth in China, rising domestic production, and the arrival of Russian pipeline gas, creating a more competitive gas market,” he added.

Thompson went on to say that the Chinese uncontracted LNG demand is estimated to be 17 Mt in 2020 and 23 Mt in 2021. He stated that U.S. off-takers will now be looking to target this market. “Contract and portfolio suppliers with contracted supply into China and U.S. offtake – notably Shell, BP and Cheniere – could also target increasing volumes of U.S. LNG within existing contracts into China if agreement can be reached with key buyers, including CNOOC and PetroChina,” Thompson added.

Mr. Osborne,

This is in response to your piece in the Houston Chronicle about the potential glut of LNG supply from all the export facilities being built. I nearly yelled aloud in frustration about the bit where Asian countries will or won’t switch from dirty coal which they have in abundance, to imported natural gas which is “lower in carbon emissions.”

NO IT ISN’T — multiple studies have proven that while gas only emits half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, if you take into account the methane leaks along the supply chain. Some like to either pretend that methane doesn’t count, or that it’s still better as long as you stick with the lowball estimates of leakage rates put out by the industry and its friends.

But independent studies, mostly done by Howarth and Ingraffea, have shown that real rates are much higher than that, high enough that natural gas may actually be worse in greenhouse gas terms than coal.

Of course, there is a time element that makes this partly a matter of opinion, or chosen focus: carbon dioxide lasts, some of it, for centuries in the upper atmosphere and surely this will matter a lot to whoever is still alive on this Earth 200 years from now—if humanity survives this period of criminal irresponsibility.

But methane, while it’s all out of the atmosphere within 12 years, has a much more intense effect during that brief period, something like 100 times the impact of carbon dioxide.

So, given how close we are to various dangerous tipping points where positive feedback mechanisms kick in, arguably eliminating methane emissions is more important.

But you already knew all this, didn’t you? And no doubt, the executives deciding whether to invest in LNG ports know it too. Don’t they? But apparently algorithms of profit outweigh a livable planet for our children; they’re betting that agencies and news sources will keep evading the reality of natural gas being no solution for another couple of decades; after all, how long have they been pretending climate change is only a theory, and getting away with it?

Meanwhile, renewable energy is becoming increasingly competitive, yet is not taken seriously as an alternative. Why?

Mary Wildfire in West Virginia, near Cancer Alley #2 (now under construction)