india mozambique economic cooperation

In a crucial bilateral meeting between Indian petroleum Minister Dr M VeerappaMoily and his Mozambique counterpart MsEsperanca Bias, Mozambique Minister for Mineral Resources e during Petrotech 2014 at greater Noida today, the two Ministers agreed to concluded a Memorandum of Understanding between India and Mozambique for accelerating the cooperation in hydrocarbon sector.Dr. Moily said that a draft of the MoU between the Indian and Mozambique governments have been framed and sent to the Indian High Commission at Mozambique. “We need to expedite the signing of this MoU as soon as possible.” Mozambique Minister invited the Indian ministerial delegation for the formal signing of this MoU, to document this G-2-G cooperation.Dr. Moily said that India will respond to the invitation very soon. 

Dr. Moliy urged the Mozambique minister to expedite the consortium related issues and also fast-track the development of the discovered assets. The Indian companies hold 30 per cent of the project , the operatorship of which lies with Anadarco. The visiting Minister for Mineral Resources exuded optimism that the deals relating the LNG project will fructify soon. This was one of the 11 bilateral meetings lined up during the Petrotech-2014, organized by ONGC. 

The Indian minister also said that India has large demand for natural gas including in the power sector where 18,000MW gas based power projects have been commissioned and another 10,000MW gas based power projects are under implementation. Keeping this in mind we need about 8 trains of LNG. Given the expertise of Indian upstream companies like ONGC in petroleum business, Mozambique asked for training their youth. “We are starting just now and our people need training from Indian companies who have been there for a long time”, said the Mozambique Minister. Minister assured that India has the expertise to train oil and gas personnel in entire value chain .The meeting was also attended resented by Petroleum Secretary, ONGC CMD, OVL MD and other corporate honchos. 

By: k.mohan