Energy — oil & gas in Tanzania.

Energy — oil & gas

Tanzania holds substantial proved natural gas reserves in the Lindi and Mtwara offshore fields. No gas is being exported. Onshore Songosongo and Madimba feed domestic power plants; neither will scale. The transformation is Tanzania LNG, with FID and first gas on a multi-year forward path. The consortium plan envisages two LNG trains and a dedicated export terminal at one of the southern coastal sites.

Appraisal work is running now. Operators are drilling deviated wells to confirm pay thickness, lateral continuity and fluid contacts in thin Tertiary sand intervals. The geology is challenging: high water cut, heterogeneous pay, low pressure. This is the thesis.

The fiscal framework is stable. TPDC, the national oil company, holds equity in Block 2 and participates in Tanzania LNG licensing. The Petroleum Act requires meaningful skilled-labour localisation and mandates transparency. The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority is the technical regulator. Government take at plateau is broadly aligned with regional norms; terms have been published and negotiated.

The brownfield-versus-frontier balance is frontier-weighted in opportunity but appraisal-mature in execution. Lindi and Mtwara are not producing fields; they are in appraisal phase. The drilling now is designed to reduce resource uncertainty before FID. This is precisely where multilateral wells in thin, water-cut pay demand advanced perforation design, coil-tubing stimulation and selective-zone isolations. Equinor and ExxonMobil are known buyers of foreign completion and well-testing technology. Equinor has a long technical relationship with TPDC, including substantial training and capacity-building activity over many years. This is institutional memory, not a transactional history.

The next 12 months are appraisal-critical. FID would lock in appraisal drilling budgets. Equinor will drive completion strategy.

Risks exist. FID could slip if consortium alignment on capex and financing fragments; operators are pressure-testing terms and the host government is pushing for higher take. Any delay compresses the appraisal schedule and shrinks the near-term pilot window. Financing is another variable: Western banks have been retreating from East African energy infrastructure, and the consortium may shift toward non-Western lending. That shift would reduce operator leverage to adopt Western technology and could push procurement toward alternative suppliers. Port and terminal-site decisions are still in motion.