Advanced technology to unlock Mozambique’s LNG

Mozambique

Victor Joseph, Southern Africa area director at Baker Hughes, and Paul de Villiers, the company’s sales leader for South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique, talk to The Energy Year about supplying essential technology to support Mozambique’s major energy projects and investing in local talent to support sustainable energy development for future generations. Baker Hughes is an energy technology company that provides comprehensive solutions for the energy and industrial sectors.

What is Baker Hughes’s involvement in Mozambique’s LNG projects?
Victor JOSEPH: We consider ourselves a key participant in the establishment of Mozambique as a prominent LNG supplier and our work spans across the Baker Hughes enterprise. Sub-Saharan Africa has growing energy needs, and we’re committed to delivering solutions that help meet demand from our customers. The contracts we secure are not just beneficial for Baker Hughes. They hold significant value for the people of Mozambique as well.

Paul DE VILLIERS: Our mission is to ensure that energy is driven to where it needs to be. This translates to providing cleaner, safer and more affordable energy for the people of Mozambique and across Sub-Saharan Africa. LNG is a critical piece of this puzzle, and we’re committed to executing projects to the benefit of our clients and the Mozambican government. This will involve significant investments in both floating and land-based LNG technologies that Baker Hughes has.
We already have an established presence in the country. Over the past several years we have worked to develop talent locally and trained Mozambicans in a variety of energy technology domains including subsea systems and gas technology installations, commissioning, testing, maintenance and production. This type of training requires a substantial time and financial investment on the part of Baker Hughes, but it will pay dividends for both our company and the local community. We invest in local talent and enable our customers to have access to a broader pool of upskilled local resources to support their projects on the ground in an efficient manner.

What is your assessment of the competitive landscape in the Mozambican oil and gas services segment?
VJ: Mozambique’s oil and gas services market is undeniably competitive, with large international companies vying for market share along with Baker Hughes. However, I believe that we are well positioned.
Baker Hughes has extensive expertise in large-bore gas projects around the world. When you go to a large-bore gas project, especially in ultra-deepwater as we have in Mozambique, it is a very specific technology. We have a diverse range of experiences and products to draw from – not just with trees like our Aptara-H horizontal tree system, but all the way through the subsea system.
Our main differentiator, however, is our commitment to building local capabilities. We believe that our sustainable approach and our investment in Mozambican talent will resonate with clients and help us capture market share. In addition to our investment in Mozambique’s people, we also have facilities across the country. Our headquarters in Maputo is complemented by our 30,000-square-metre facility in Pemba in the north. This facility supports assembly, maintenance and overhaul capabilities for all of our Mozambican upstream activities.

PV: Another reason we’ve always been really strong on this is that our offshore production technology complements our portfolio in Industrial & Energy Technology, particularly our gas technology and climate technology solutions portfolios. Our CEO Lorenzo Simonelli and his team have always supported the development of technology that integrates well across the portfolio between subsea and turbomachinery, and this supports the entire energy value chain.

How receptive is the Mozambican market to new technologies and new applications?
PV: Government feedback has been very positive and encouraging so far. We are confident that the uptake of technology in Mozambique’s energy sector will continue to be rapid, and our portfolio can help support the expansion of Mozambique’s energy industry, including new energy developments such as hydrogen and CCUS. Successful deployment will hinge on the development of the necessary energy infrastructure, and we are prepared to collaborate with Mozambique to achieve this goal.

VJ: We believe that technological innovation is key to achieving safer, cleaner and more affordable energy. Our investments are geared towards achieving these goals, and technology remains the cornerstone of our LNG and broader natural gas strategy.

Read our latest insights on:

• Mozambique
• Namibia