It's a significant boost for French giant TotalEnergies from the Trump administration. On Thursday, March 13, the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) once again approved a $4.7 billion (€4.3 billion) loan to the multinational oil and gas company for the Mozambique LNG project, according to the Financial Times, then Bloomberg. Contacted, TotalEnergies did not deny the information.

Such financing would facilitate the restart of this highly controversial project, which aims to exploit liquefied natural gas (LNG) reserves in northern Mozambique, East Africa. The US administration had already approved this loan a first time in 2020, at the end of Donald Trump's first term as US president. But it was frozen in 2021, after a jihadist attack a few kilometers from the industrial site.

Despite continuing violence in the region and political instability linked to suspected manipulation of October 2024 presidential election results, the French company, operator and main shareholder of Mozambique LNG (26.5%, alongside Mozambican and Asian shareholders), is still hoping to leverage loans and other financial guarantees to relaunch operations. By 2020, 31 public and private financial institutions had signed loan agreements worth close to $15 billion. TotalEnergies does not specify how much of this amount has now been confirmed.

You have 72.57% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.