The Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) is hopeful that the Host Government Agreement (HGA) negotiations between the government and International Oil and Gas Companies on the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will resume in January 2021.

The Tanzanian government and the project developers were supposed to have concluded the negotiations by September 2019 which would have paved way for the Final Investment Decision (FID), but it was stalled for over a year after the government decided to review the Production Sharing Agreements (PSA).

The Communications Manager of TPDC, Marie Msellemu, said that the government is finalising compensation for the land in Lindi for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) site.

She said “we accumulated interest for two years that we hope to finalise payment by end of this December.”

“We expect to finalise HGA negotiations on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) this December and start negotiations on LNG in January, 2021.”

Although she did not the state the accrued amount, she said that once payment was completed, negotiations would resume while awaiting the final decision of the PSAs.

In 2017, the negotiations stopped because the International Oil and Gas Companies (IOCs) could not agree on modalities together and it was later agreed that they undertake it separately. The negotiations resumed in April 2018 but encountered a hitch after the PSA’s were taken to the Attorney General (AG) for review, stalling negotiations.