Mozambique’s minister for mineral resources and energy, Carlos Zacarias, said last week that the construction of the country’s largest gas-fired power plant is 60% complete, and that the infrastructure is expected to be operational in 2024.
“We have seen substantial progress of around 65%, this is substantial progress that satisfies us,” said Zacarias, speaking to journalists after visiting the Temane Thermal Power Plant (CTT), in the district of Inhassoro, Inhambane province, southern Mozambique.
The government has mobilised the consortium that owns the project to complete the plant by 2024, in line with the commitment made at the start of construction in 2022, he continued. The minister for mineral resources and energy said that CTT will produce energy from natural gas supplied by a gas production plant being built by the South African multinational Sasol in Inhassoro, more than 70 kilometres from Maputo.
“One particular point we wanted to emphasise about CTT is that it will produce 450 megawatts,” which will be supplied “to the country and, of course, to other clients,” said Carlos Zacarias.
CTT is budgeted at US$650 million ( more than €606 million) according to data from Globeleq, the multinational with a majority stake in the infrastructure.
In addition to natural gas, the project will also reuse the steam generated by this resource to produce an additional amount of electricity.
As part of the project, a transmission line is being built between Temane, in Inhassoro, and Maputo province, with a length of 563 kilometres and a budget of more than US$400 million (more than €373 million).
Meanwhile, Carlos Zacarias said that the country will reduce its cooking gas imports by 70% from 2024, with the start-up of the Temane Thermal Power Plant.
“Everything is being done so that this project will also be ready by 2024,” with a projection to “produce around 30,000 tonnes of cooking gas, which will reduce import levels by around 70%,” said Carlos Zacarias.
He said that cooking gas will be one of the products of another power station being built by the South African multinational Sasol, as part of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) project.
The cooking gas (technically called Liquefied Petroleum Gas) will be a fraction of the 23 million gigajoules projected by the PSA, according to Sasol data.
Priscillah Mabelane, vice-president of Sasol, told journalists that the PSA is budgeted at more than US$700 million (around €654 million).
An important portion of the amount that will be produced by the PSA project will be destined for CTT, which will generate 450 megawatts of electricity, making it the largest gas-fired power station in Mozambique.