LONDON — Liz Truss has pushed for $1.15 billion in British taxpayer support for a Mozambican gas project now embroiled in allegations of kidnapping, murder and rape.
Truss’ move to back the project as trade secretary in spring 2020 was opposed by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and many of her Conservative cabinet colleagues.
Britain’s new Labor government is currently considering whether to continue providing taxpayer-backed direct loans and guarantees to British exporters and banks supporting French energy giant TotalEnergies’ $20 billion liquefied natural gas project.
Last month, POLITICO reported that Mozambican military units massacred at least 97 civilians in an operation at the TotalEnergies gate at the Cabo Delgado gas site.
Security in the region has deteriorated since at least 2019, when ISIS-affiliated militants calling themselves al-Shabab drove mercenaries from the notorious Kremlin-linked Wagner Group out of the region.
When Truss and her cabinet colleagues were making their decision in June 2020, “it was clear to a reasonably informed observer that the conflict was escalating and that exploitation of gas reserves was one of the key drivers,” Wolf-Christian Paes said. , is a senior fellow in armed conflict at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
But a former senior official at Britain’s Department of Trade, who was granted anonymity, recalled that although the Cabinet was concerned about the project’s environmental impact and officials were “ambiguous”, Truss was stubborn.
She told officials to “find a way for this to happen,” the official added.
Raped, tortured and murdered.
In April 2021, just 10 months after Truss intervened, the project was halted as militants swept through the region and massacred more than 1,000 people.
That summer, a Mozambican commando unit led by an officer who said his job was to protect the “Total Project” accused the fleeing villagers of being Islamist rebels and separated about 180 to 250 men from the village. women and children. At least one woman was gang-raped.
The prisoners were then locked in a shipping container at the TotalEnergies site for three months. They were beaten, shot, suffocated, starved, disappeared, tortured and murdered. Only 26 people survived.
“Mozambique LNG has no knowledge of the incident and has not received any information that such an incident has occurred,” TotalEnergies said in a statement.
Tony Bosworth, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “This is the latest on atrocities in the region where the project is helping to fuel an uprising that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.” . The NGO launched an unsuccessful legal challenge to the UK government’s support for the project in September 2020.
“There is no doubt that the British cabinet was aware of the security situation in Cabo Delgado at the time,” said IISS’s Paes. “Investing in areas with active armed conflict is a very risky proposition.”
There was “big debate at the time” within the cabinet about pushing for $1.15 billion in funding as Truss was considering supporting the project in spring 2020, a former senior official said. These claims are said to focus on climate change.
Britain was due to host the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow the following year and the project “became a totem war between governments that wanted to proceed and those that did not,” a former senior official said.
On one side were cabinet ministers who argued that “the UK is a COP-bound country to fight climate change and it is not appropriate for taxpayers’ money to be spent in this way,” the official explained. “The other side said, ‘No, no, no (UK export finance) should be able to finance whatever they want. Many other countries are doing this too.’”
Truss was “very eager to get this going,” the former official said. The trade secretary at the time said it would be a “missed opportunity” if the UK did not support the project, and argued that if the UK did not support it, China would too. “Liz said, ‘No, no, we do this.’”
Truss declined to comment for this article.
‘Britain’s reputational risk’
On 10 June 2020, Truss signed off on $1.15 billion in funding for the TotalEnergies LNG project, approved by then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
The support, which is yet to be determined, will be provided through UK Export Finance, where banks will underwrite loans to UK businesses working on projects and, in some cases, provide their own direct financing to those businesses.
Documents released as part of the legal challenge show Truss’ decision to approve the project came after a flood of letters of opposition from cabinet colleagues, including the UK’s top business and international development ministers.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab warned of the project’s “reputational risks” for the UK, given the country is scheduled to host COP26 next year and is encouraging other countries to move away from fossil fuel investments.
When Boris Johnson heard about the plans, he “bounced back” on approving them because he was too far ahead to cancel them, the Times reported. “The Prime Minister was very angry and immediately called for a review of UKEF’s fossil fuel policy,” the newspaper said, quoting a source. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
But by December 2020, months after Truss approved Britain’s support, Johnson ended future government financial support for similar overseas fossil fuel projects.
Talks are currently underway. irresistible forcee — a contractual provision that removes a party’s obligations in the event of a disaster — to release the TotalEnergies project. Paes said the region is more stable now than it was in 2021. Military campaigns by various Southern African Development Community countries in support of the Mozambican government.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said he hopes to restart the project by the end of 2024.
“We are currently in dialogue with project sponsors and other lenders regarding the latest status and potential of the LNG production project in Mozambique. irresistible force Things will get better,” a UK Export Finance spokesperson said.
Activists continue to put pressure on the money to be withdrawn.
“This project is a carbon time bomb linked to genocide, rape and torture.” said Bosworth of Friends of the Earth. “It is unconscionable for the British government to intervene in this matter.”
