All the sketches between Saipem and Total in Mozambique
What is happening between Total and Saipem in the Afungi area in Cabo Delgado (Mozambique)
Before resuming work in the Afungi area in Cabo Delgado (Mozambique), Total should attempt to review its relationship with one of its main subcontractors, Saipem, a member of the CCS joint venture, which also groups McDermott International and Chiyoda, responsible for development. of wells. The amount of the CCS contract is $ 8 billion.
Total has in fact accumulated – according to the Africa Intelligence website – several complaints against the Italian group. In private, the executives of the French company do not hide their complaints against the top management of the Italian company.
Bertrand Noyelle, CEO of Saipem Mozambique from May 2019 to November 2020, for example, was deemed not sufficiently operational. His replacement Michele Poggi is often on the move because he is also, since March 2020, CEO of Saipem East Africa, of which he follows the projects in Uganda. Similarly, Roberto Uberti, president of the CCS joint venture since June 2019, is also Area Manager of Saipem East Africa, a function that takes up a lot of his time. The only two Saipem executives who seem to have managed to earn the esteem of TotalEnergies colleagues are Luca Fabbro (CCS works manager) and Gianluca Molinaro (project coordinator).
The resumption of work on the TotalEnergies liquefaction project could take more than a year. It will be necessary to ensure safety around the Afungi site in the north of the country, but also the path of materials and equipment. The tanker has reportedly abandoned the idea of using the small port of Palma, which is not deep enough and therefore requires permanent dredging and can therefore only accommodate two vessels at the same time.
The equipment could be unloaded further south, at the port of Pemba (capital of the province of Cabo Delgado), then transported by road to Palma, about 360 km, at the rate of 200 trucks per day for eighteen months. . Protecting such a chain of vehicles from possible attacks by self-styled jihadists still present in northern Mozambique will be a major challenge. The Rwandan military and those of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been fighting against these groups since mid-July with some success, but normalization is still far from guaranteed.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/saipem-total/ on Mon, 01 Nov 2021 08:28:33 +0000.