The board of the Export-Import Bank of the US (Exim) has voted unanimously to authorise a direct loan of up to $5 billion to support Anadarko Petroleum’s Mozambique liquefied natural gas project.
Exim said the financing will support US exports of goods and services for the engineering, procurement, and construction of the onshore LNG plant and related facilities.
The bank added that the loan would help support about 16,400 US jobs over a five-year construction period at suppliers in Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and the District of Columbia.
Through fees and interest earned, the transaction is also anticipated to generate more than $600 million in revenue for US taxpayers, according to the bank.
Bank president Kimberly Reed said: “Private financing was not available for this project given its size, complexity, and risk (so) necessitating support from Exim.
“We have been told that China and Russia were slated to finance this deal before our Exim board quorum was restored by the US Senate, …,” she said. “The project now will be completed without their involvement.”
Reed added that the loan deal will benefit Mozambique to the tune of more than $60 billion over the project’s lifetime, more than four times the country’s current gross domestic product.
Exim board member Spencer Bachus claimed that without the involvement of the US in this project, it would become “a debt trap for Mozambique” with environmental, labour and work conditions given little regard and negative social impacts on local communities.
French supermajor Total will operate Mozambique LNG once its acquisition of Anadarko’s African assets has been completed.
Gas from the initial two-train LNG scheme will come from the Golfinho-Atum field in Area 1, acreage that in total holds about 65 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Exim is also considering making a loan to the ExxonMobil-led Rovuma LNG project in Mozambique.