Iran war revives U.S. energy bet in Mozambique despite Islamic State threat

LONDON — Exxon Mobil is betting billions of dollars that Mozambique can become one of the world’s next great sources of liquefied natural gas — and one far removed from the strategic vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz.

The energy giant announced that it and its partners had awarded $1.1 billion in pre-investment contracts as part of the Rovuma LNG project in Mozambique’s troubled Cabo Delgado region.

The contracts mark a significant step toward a final investment decision on a project expected to involve roughly $30 billion in investment in the country on the southeastern coast of Africa.

“[We] are positioning the project for efficient execution and supporting the long-term economic potential of this strategic investment for Mozambique,” Exxon Mobil said in a statement announcing the expenditure.

The company is partnering with Mozambique’s national oil company and similar companies across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The Rovuma project had been delayed by weak energy markets when a 2021 terrorist attack on the nearby city of Palma dramatically worsened its security outlook, stalling development for years.

Roughly a third of globally traded LNG originates in the Persian Gulf, much of it from Qatar, but Qatar’s LNG exports have been crippled by infrastructure damage and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Before the Iran war, Qatar exported roughly 77 to 89 million tons of LNG annually, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and energy tracking analytics. Mozambique produced about 3.7 million tons of LNG last year, according to annual report figures from Mozambique’s National Petroleum Institute.

The Rovuma LNG facility is expected to produce up to 18.6 million tons of LNG per year when completed in 2031, according to Exxon Mobil’s official project development plans.

Mozambican LNG production would not be affected by conflicts in the Strait of Hormuz and is far removed from potential geopolitical flash points in Asia.

Despite Mozambique’s potential, the threat posed by the Islamist insurgency Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’a has repeatedly delayed the development of the country’s vast gas reserves.

The Mozambican Islamic State affiliate at one point was strong enough to capture major towns before being driven back by the Mozambican military with international support.

A United Nations report released this summer said the militants have regrouped and are gathering strength, partly through the recruitment of fighters from elsewhere in the region.

“In Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado Province, despite ongoing multinational military operations, the strength of Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’a … [has] increased to an estimated 400-500 fighters. Between December and March, the group intensified recruitment efforts by calling for new recruits, exploiting illegal migration routes to move new regional recruits,” the report stated.

That figure is a significant increase from a similar January U.N. report that had assessed the group at 250 to 350 fighters.

No longer capable of large-scale attacks — such as the massacres of civilians and the overrunning of towns — the insurgents instead have increasingly deployed in smaller groups. They have also launched attacks on domestic civilian vessels in a rare example of an insurgency expanding into the maritime domain.

Exxon Mobil is not the only energy giant taking another look at Mozambique amid the war in the Middle East. French energy giant TotalEnergies is developing a separate large-scale LNG project in Mozambique.

Mozambique President Daniel Chapo, 49, is the country’s youngest-ever elected president and the first born after independence.

Standing 6-foot-8, Mr. Chapo is a conspicuous presence in Mozambican politics and has taken what many see as a pragmatic approach to solving the Cabo Delgado insurgency.

Mr. Chapo has stressed reconciliation and expressed concern about the lack of economic opportunity, particularly for young people, as one of the root causes of violence in the region.

Many in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province, say that too little of the wealth generated by the province’s natural resources is spent locally and that the benefits instead flow to Maputo, the capital, more than 1,000 miles to the south.

“The reality experienced in Cabo Delgado is different from the image that is frequently portrayed. Terrorist attacks remain confined to specific areas, while a large part of the province continues to be stable, allowing the population to carry out its economic and social activities normally, as well as allowing the development of major natural gas extraction projects in the region,” Mr. Chapo said in an address to senior members of the ruling Frelimo party this year.

Before Mr. Chapo, who was sworn into office in January 2025, Mozambique’s response to the crisis often relied on foreign forces and mercenaries.

An African Union intelligence official who spoke to The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity said Russia’s Wagner Group was unprepared for bush warfare in Mozambique, often stumbling into elaborate ambushes. The Wagner Group withdrew quickly. Similarly, a regional peacekeeping force led by South Africa deployed to the country from 2021 until its withdrawal was completed in 2024.

Where others tried and failed, Rwanda has been more successful.

Rwanda sent an initial force of 1,000 soldiers and police into Cabo Delgado in July 2021. That deployment has since expanded to more than 4,000 personnel, according to conflict-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Rwanda’s officers draw on the country’s experience of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group. Each year, Rwandan forces deployed to Mozambique have commemorated the events of 1994.

Rwanda’s mission has succeeded in part by focusing on realistic objectives. Rather than trying to defeat Mozambique’s ISIS affiliate outright, it has focused on narrower security goals for which conventional forces are better suited: the recapture of large towns held by terrorists in set-piece actions and the protection of civilians, businesses and critical energy infrastructure.

In May, the State Department opened two grant competitions worth up to $7.89 million to strengthen security in Mozambique, explicitly linking the programs to the protection of U.S. economic interests in Cabo Delgado.

Complicating the broader counterinsurgency effort, however, are U.S. sanctions on the Rwanda Defense Force, the principal foreign military force fighting the insurgency. Washington sanctioned the RDF and four senior military officials on March 2 over Rwanda’s support for the M23 rebels in eastern Congo.

The Rovuma project brings together governments and companies that are often competitors in the wider struggle for energy and influence. Alongside Exxon Mobil and Mozambique’s Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos, or ENH, are China National Petroleum Corp., Italy’s Eni, Korea Gas Corp. and the Emirati company XRG.

The overlap is especially striking on the security front. The principal foreign force protecting a province where U.S. and Chinese energy interests converge is an African military under U.S. sanctions.

Such boutique geopolitical arrangements are not unfamiliar in Portuguese-speaking Africa. Angola’s civil war was one of the bloodiest conflicts in Cold War Africa.

Soviet military advisers deployed down to the brigade level aided a Marxist government fighting CIA-backed rebels of UNITA, or National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, well into the 1980s. Yet during the conflict, American-owned Gulf Oil installations in Angola were protected by communist Cuban expeditionary forces.

The $1.1 billion in contracts awarded in Mozambique does not yet constitute a final investment decision for the roughly $30 billion project, but it represents a substantial wager that, after years of war and delay, Cabo Delgado can finally be made secure enough to deliver its gas to the world.