Gas Exploitation Threatens To Severely Harm Marine Area in Mozambique: Report 

The report says gas exploitation projects in the region lack sufficient environmental impact assessment.

Gas exploitation in Mozambique puts ecologically valuable marine areas at risk. A new report by the Fair Finance Coalition Southern African and Justiça Ambiental titled ‘True Risk’ said that the projects planned in the Rovuma Basin in Cabo Delgado could have extensive, severe, long-term impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, and sea-dependent communities along the shoreline. 

The report stated that the four deep-sea projects planned for the offshore are Mozambique LNG led by TotalEnergies (France); Rovuma LNG led by ExxonMobil (USA) and ENI (Italy); Coral South FLNG and Coral North FLNG projects led by Eni (Italy). It said that if these projects move forward, the cumulative impact of severe chemical, physical, and acoustic pollution, physical damage, invasive species from shipballast water, and worsening climate change, from all the projects combined over their full lifetimes, could be devastating.

The report author, Chris Engelbrecht, said, “There is simply not enough known about the ecological value of the region or the full impacts of deep-sea gas exploitation to be able to accurately predict impacts or prevent irreversible ecological damage.” He stressed that the project risk assessments do not include a thorough marine ecology survey of the deep-water environment, or any independent studies for deep-water species.

Flawed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes are a common practice in Mozambique and are used to rubber-stamp damaging development, according to a report released in Maputo last year that exposes the role of service providers in steamrolling destructive mega projects in Mozambique, said the report. 

Impact of Gas Exploitation Projects 

The report cited that there is already concern that the one operating project in the Rovuma Basin, Coral South FLNG, is underestimating its air pollution levels and greenhouse gas emissions.

This report concluded that the environmental risks of gas exploitation projects in the Rovuma Basin are significantly greater than the assessments made in the project EIAs. It states that the EIAs have many flaws and missing information that make them ineffective and invalid for basing decisions.

The report also noted that if the Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) produced by the four projects is burned, the resulting greenhouse gas emissions would take up at least 7.5 % of the remaining global carbon budget for a very high (83%) chance of staying under average global warming of 1.5˚C. The remaining global carbon budget (RCB) refers to all the carbon that humanity can emit if we want to stay below the 1.5˚C limit.

Recommendations

The report recommended that an immediate moratorium be placed on the activities of all four gas projects, in application of the Precautionary Principle, or First Do No Harm Principle. This should remain in place until there is a thorough understanding of the ecological value of the Rovuma Basin and Afungi Peninsula, as well as a thorough understanding of the full projected impacts of the gas projects on the habitats and biodiversity of the region. 

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