Last month, the US Export-Import Bank (Exim) reapproved the loan to support the export of American equipment and services for the development and construction of the US$20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project on the Afungi Peninsula in northern Mozambique under the French oil company, TotalEnergies.
It entails providing a loan guarantee for the supply of American equipment for use by TotalEnergies to produce LNG.
The financing is part of Washington’s aim to make American companies and suppliers more competitive, especially against Chinese and Russian companies.
US Exim Bank last month stated that before the 2019 board approval of the LNG project, “Exim was told that China and Russia originally were slated to finance the deal, a factor important to the United States’ national security interests, allowing the transaction to be included as part of Exim’s China and Transformation Exports Programme (CTEP)”.