Resumption of $20bn Cabo Delgado gas project reignites both hope and resentment

It is barely 7am in the departure lounge at Pemba airport in northern Mozambique, on a day in early May. Around a dozen passengers sit quietly, some trying to recover from a short night's sleep.

Most are aid workers waiting for a United Nations-chartered flight to Mueda, Mocímboa da Praia or Palma, several hundred kilometres north of Pemba.

Suddenly, four heavily built men stand up. A pilot hands them unusual flat, brightly coloured life jackets. The group walks across the tarmac towards a helicopter.

"They're going to Afungi," one aid worker remarks. "A direct landing at the Total base."

A closed-off enclave

Afungi is a peninsula near the town of Palma in Mozambique's far north, in the Cabo Delgado province close to the border with Tanzania, whereTotalEnergies and its partners have established theMozambique LNG (liquid natural gas) project.

The $20 billion project involves developing an offshore gas field in the Rovuma Basin and building facilities onshore to liquefy methane for export.

The reserves, estimated at 5,000 billion cubic metres, are among the largest ever discovered.

For this vast undertaking, TotalEnergies is being joined by several international partners, including three Indian oil companies, Japan's Mitsui and the Mozambican state, which holds a 15 percent stake.

The Afungi site covers 7,000 hectares behind perimeter fencing. At its centre is a paved airstrip surrounded by accommodation blocks and a maze of warehouses.

"Foreign companies isolate their workers. It does nothing for local development," says Abudo Gafuro, an activist with the human rights group Kundeleya.

Since 2017, Cabo Delgado has been gripped by an Islamist insurgency. Militants from the group Ansar al-Sunna (locally known as al-Shabaab), claim to be seeking to implement Sharia law and a new social order that would deliver a fairer distribution of wealth in the province.

According to the conflict-monitoring organisation Acled, more than 6,500 people have been killed, and a UN agency estimates at least 1 million people have been displaced.

TotalEnergies decided to suspend the Mozambique LNG project in 2020 due to security concerns. In April 2021 it officially announced the suspension after a series of deadly coordinated jihadist attacks. Work resumed only in January this year. A map shows the position of Afungi in northern Mozambique.

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Compensation and frustration

Sitting beneath an acacia tree, José Cheila* looks exhausted. A few days earlier, he attended a community meeting on land issues.

"The Total representative didn't even turn up," says the Palma-based civil society co-ordinator.

For nearly a decade, compensation claims linked to the expropriation of hundreds of farmers and fishermen have remained unresolved.

In Mozambique, land belongs to the state – although collective, individual and customary land use rights are recognised. In 2012, the government granted a land use and benefit right, known as a DUAT, to the Texas-based company Anadarko, which discovered the Rovuma gas field.

TotalEnergies inherited the agreement when it took over the project in 2019. The deal provided for relocation housing, individual and collective financial compensation and material assistance, including motorcycles.

While Cheila deems the compensation package fair, many people are yet to receive what was promised.

"About 184 million meticais [roughly €2.5m] in compensation was planned in 2014, but some families are still waiting because the project was suspended," says Eduardo Caponde of the Cabo Delgado Community Development Forum.

The resumption of Mozambique LNG has boosted expectations.

"Discussions have restarted. But new questions have emerged," Caponde points out. "Is an amount agreed in 2014 still appropriate today, when the cost of living in Palma has changed so much?"

Contacted by the Forbidden Stories consortium, TotalEnergies said all 643 families affected by the project had been relocated to the village of Quitunda, a claim reporters confirmed during one of their visits.

"By the end of 2025, the land compensation activities foreseen in the resettlement plan had been completed," the company stated in an emailed response, adding that "livelihood restoration programmes" had also been implemented. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, left, shakes hands with TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne at a meeting in Maputo, Mozambique on 3 February, 2023.

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Fortress economy

Another source of frustration is the project's isolation from the surrounding economy.

In September 2025, TotalEnergies signed a memorandum of understanding with Mozambique's Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN).

The €8.5m programme is intended to fund job creation and income-generating projects in the districts of Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, but many residents remain unconvinced.

"Communities expected gas workers to use local restaurants and hotels and travel by motorcycle taxi," says Aly Caetano, Cabo Delgado co-ordinator for the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD).

"Some entrepreneurs took on debt because they believed this development was coming. But they never see the people from Total."

The highly securitised nature of the project has added to local resentment, particularly as nearby communities continue to face attacks from insurgents.

Human rights concerns

On 24 March, 2021, Palma suffered the deadliest attack in its history when hundreds of militants looted property, killed residents and controlled the town for nearly two weeks. The death toll is estimated at around 1,500 people.

Residents say several hundred civilians managed to reach the Afungi peninsula. At the time, the gas project had already been suspended and only limited personnel remained on site. Nonetheless, evacuation boats were organised to transport people to Pemba.

Those who stayed behind say they later endured harsh reprisals by Mozambique's armed forces, known as the FADM, after government troops retook the town.

"Our own soldiers were killing us. Our brothers," says Cheila.

Two legal complaints have been filed against TotalEnergies in connection with the Palma attack.

The first was lodged in 2023 before a court in Nanterre, near Paris, by three survivors and four relatives of victims from the United Kingdom and South Africa. They accuse the company of involuntary manslaughter and failing to assist people in danger, alleging negligence in the management of security arrangements for staff and subcontractors.

A second complaint was filed in 2025 with France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office by the Germany-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The German human rights organisation is examining the relationship between TotalEnergies and the Mozambican armed forces tasked with protecting, among other sites, the Mozambique LNG project. Rwandan soldiers guard the TotalEnergies LNG Project in Afungi in the Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique, on 29 September, 2022.

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Security agreement

In 2020, the Mozambique LNG project signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mozambican government regarding security.

The agreement provided for the deployment of a Joint Task Force of around 600 Mozambican soldiers in and around Afungi. Around 10 percent are elite troops known as fusileiros, trained by the United States.

Under the agreement, the project has to cover accommodation and food costs for the soldiers, who also receive a bonus linked to rank. Any involvement in abuses or human rights violations results in the automatic loss of that payment.

According to a 2023 internal audit commissioned by TotalEnergies and led in part by former French diplomat and humanitarian worker Jean-Christophe Ruffin, the arrangement was intended to reduce incentives for misconduct among troops, whose poor living conditions are widely recognised.

However, the report also raised concerns.
"The existence of a direct financial relationship with members of the Joint Task Force creates a direct link between Mozambique LNG and these troops," the report states. "It is doubtful that this conditional bonus can deter potential abuses. In the event of human rights violations, this relationship directly engages the responsibility of the consortium."

In 2021, payments to the Joint Task Force were suspended after local communities alleged human rights abuses. The allegations related to "abuse against two fishermen", according to TotalEnergies, and were not connected to the violence committed during the recapture of Palma.

Mozambican authorities have not opened an investigation into the events in Palma.

* Name changed.

It is the first instalment of Mozambique Exposed, an investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a global non-profit network of investigative journalists. The project is based on nearly 100 interviews and five months of reporting by 30 journalists from 10 media organisations, including RFI and Les Observateurs de France 24 (France), Evident Media (United States), Expresso (Portugal), M28 Investigates (Rwanda), Paper Trail Media (Germany), SourceMaterial (United Kingdom), ZDF (Germany) and Zitamar News (Mozambique).