Tanzania, holder of East Africa’s biggest natural-gas reserves after Mozambique, will decide on a $15 billion export plant in three years, potentially adding to a glut of supply projects from the U.S. to Australia.
Construction of the 10 million-ton-a-year LNG plant would probably be complete around 2020, said Willington Hudson, a director at state-run Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp. BG Group Plc and Statoil ASA are still drilling the fields that would feed the plant, he said.
Discoveries in East Africa this decade have established the region as the newest gas province and raised the prospect of exports to world markets. While rival projects from North America to Australia promise to boost global shipments, BG and its peers in Tanzania and Mozambique are pressing ahead on the expectation demand will outstrip supply in the coming decades.
“You need to look at energy demand for the next 50 years,” Hudson, director for downstream operations, said in an interview in London. “Demand for gas will continue going up.”
Tanzania’s first offshore gas discovery was made in 2010. Since then a series of finds has expanded the country’s potential reserves to 55 trillion cubic feet, enough to meet about 11 years of demand from U.S. homes. Almost 90 percent of the resources are far out at sea, making extraction difficult, Hudson said.