Mozambique’s government wants Anadarko and Eni to work together to get a major LNG export project off the ground before the end of the decade. Maputo is heavily in favour of the rival explorers joining forces at a plant initially fed by the huge Prosperidade gas discovery, which straddles offshore Areas 1 and 4.Tavares Martinho, exploration director at state-owned oil company ENH, said: “The government wants to see Anadarko and Eni doing this development. We do not want individual projects.”Palma is the preferred site for all the liquefaction trains, he added, which could eventually number as many as 12. Anadarko of the US and Italy’s Eni are each looking to build two trains initially at Palma. Combined the companies have already discovered as much as 100 trillion cubic feet of gas off Mozambique’s coast. Martinho added that Anadarko is in talks with the government on how best to develop the LNG complex to handle gas from potential future discoveries.Other operators such as Statoil of Norway and Malaysia’s Petronas are active in the Rovuma basin.Statoil is also one of the key players chasing LNG in East African neighbour Tanzania. Earlier this week it awarded Houston-based KBR a contract for pre-front-end engineering and design work on a proposed liquefaction plant in that nation to be fed by gas from its operated block 2.A Statoil spokesman said: “We are currently in an early phase of evaluating the concept selection for a possible LNG plant.” Block 2 holds about 9 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Zafarani and Lavani discoveries.Statoil and partner ExxonMobil are clearly keen to push ahead with LNG and aim to resume block 2 drilling next year.However, the Tanzanian government has publicly said it wants the partners to work with BG Group, which has discovered similar volumes of gas in blocks 1, 3 and 4, on a joint LNG development.BG recently resumed a multi-well drilling campaign to get a better fix on reserves for what it has suggested could be a two-train liquefaction facility that could be located in the south of the country, possibly at Mtwara.BG and Statoil met recently in Tanzania. The get-together may open the way for future collaboration, sources said, but does not necessarily mean a joint development will happen. “So many variables” — political, commercial and upstream — could influence events.A BG spokesman said “it is very early days” for gas commercialisation in Tanzania. However, sources have suggested that a BG LNG project could be online in Tanzania between 2018 and 2020, the same time frame being pursued by Anadarko and Eni off Mozambique.