True Risk – new report on gas in Mozambique

Jun 30, 2025 | Article, Featured

Press Release from Fair Finance Southern Africa and Justiça Ambiental!
30 June 2025

Gas exploitation threatens to severely harm an ecologically valuable marine area in Mozambique. Projects planned for the Rovuma Basin in Cabo Delgado could have extensive, severe, long-term impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, and sea-dependent communities along the shoreline. A new report reveals that the environmental risks of the gas projects have not been thoroughly assessed.

Four deep-sea gas exploitation projects are planned for the Rovuma Basin, offshore of Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique: 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). [1] If these projects move forward, the cumulative impacts of severe chemical, physical, and acoustic pollution, physical damage, invasive species from ship ballast water, and worsening climate change, from all the projects combined over their full lifetimes, could be devastating. [2]

True Risk: The environmental risks of deep-sea gas exploitation in the Rovuma Basin of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique assesses the potential environmental risks of gas exploitation in the Rovuma Basin and interrogates the environmental impact assessments (EIA) conducted for the planned projects.

“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,” says report author Chris Engelbrecht. He stresses 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 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. For example, the relationship between gas development and an ongoing regional insurgency in the province has been underplayed, and no assessment was made of the potential impact that gas activities would have on the development of the insurgency. [3]

There is already concern that the one operating project in the Rovuma Basin, Coral South FLNG, is underestimating its greenhouse gas emissions. In March, an investigation published by Italian civil society organisation, ReCommon, revealed evidence of excessive flaring at the floating plant. [4]

The new report, True Risk, concludes 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 risks and impacts of gas development on the ecology of the region are underrepresented and understated.
  • The cumulative impacts of the gas projects are understated and incompletely formulated.
  • There is no assessment of the impacts of leaks of gas and gas condensate from wells and pipes.
  • The full lifetime emissions (Scope 3) that would result from these projects is not calculated or considered.
  • No thorough, scientifically sound surveys were conducted of the ecosystems and biodiversity in the terrestrial, near-shore or deep ocean areas affected. This means that the impacts of gas activities on the region are poorly understood. This weakens the validity of the EIA assessments and renders them ineffective.

“It is morally criminal for these gas projects to try to trivialise the harm that they could cause to our land and sea. The EIAs for the gas projects are not based on a thorough scientific understanding of the ecology of the region – and any conclusions they make that their impacts are negligible or insignificant must be challenged,” says Anabela Lemos of Justiça Ambiental!.

 

She explains further, “We also know more now than we did 10 years ago about deep sea gas exploitation, and in addition, since the EIAs were conducted, climate change impacts have worsened – as we see in the increasingly severe sea storms – and we have a much stronger understanding of how severely fossil gas adds to global temperature rise. This report raises even greater concerns about how EIAs are conducted in Mozambique – as well as in other countries that have a limited ability to ensure that there is respect for their environmental laws and international regulations and agreements that are intended to protect the natural world and limit global temperature rise.” (Lemos is a 2024 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award).

It is possible to limit average global warming to under 1.5 degrees C only if fossil fuel use is scaled down extremely rapidly, and if no new fossil fuel projects are built.

  • If the 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 degrees 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 degrees C limit.
  • If all the gas fields of the Rovuma Basin are exploited, then the LNG produced would result in greenhouse gas emissions of 9.9 GtCO2e. This would use at least 17% of the remaining carbon budget.

The report recommends 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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Notes

[1 ] Four deep-sea gas projects are planned for the Rovuma Basin, offshore of Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique: 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). Mozambique LNG and Rovuma LNG projects have shared land use rights on the Afungi Peninsula for processing facilities and supporting infrastructure, and the Coral projects are floating processing plants anchored in deep ocean. The projects and companies are closely linked through ownership of the concession blocks, the proximity of their gas fields, shared onshore land use rights, and shared terrestrial, marine and deep-sea infrastructure.
Mozambique LNG and TotalEnergies are under scrutiny following a series of reports in Politico, Le Monde and SourceMaterial, alleging links between the project and severe human rights violations; Politico, 26 September 2024. ‘”All must be beheaded”: Allegations of atrocities at French energy giant’s African stronghold‘; Le Monde Afrique. 24 November 2024. “TotalEnergies savait que des exactions etaient commises sur son site gazier au mozambique“; and SourceMaterial. 24 November 2024. “Don’t look back or we’ll shoot”; Financial Times, 16 June 2025, “TotalEnergies gas project in Mozambique faces UK human rights probe“.

[2] Engelbrecht CA, et al, (2025), ‘True Risk: The environmental risks of deep-sea gas exploitation in the Rovuma Basin of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’. Fair Finance Coalition Southern African and Justiça Ambiental!

[3] Voskoboynik, M.D. 2024. “Paid for Approval: How consulting firms and investment service providers enable human rights violations and climate injustice: the case of gas in Mozambique“. Justiça Ambiental; Gaventa J, (2021), “The failure of ‘gas for development’ – Mozambique case study”. E3G

[4] Ogno & Pastorelli, (2025), ‘Hidden Flames: impacts of the flaring of ENI’s Coral South FLNG project in Mozambique’. ReCommon.