COLUMN | More, more, more! Part two of two: Mozambique gas; ICBC price cuts; Italian Navy goes for subsea ship; more suspicious Russian ships; Ukraine strikes Black Sea terminals [Offshore Accounts]

In part one on Monday of this week, we provided More More More updates from Azerbaijan on corruption and from Australia on the country’s two biggest oil and gas producers, and reminded older readers of some cheesy pop from both the 1970s and 1990s.

Now we move on to updates on cases we have been following for years.

More Mozambican gas?

One of the most protracted projects in the last decade of the offshore industry has been TotalEnergies efforts to built two LNG trains onshore on the Afungi peninsula of Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique to take gas from large deepwater discoveries originally made by Anadarko from 2010 to 2015 in the Rovuma Basin in the Indian Ocean off Pemba island.

Partway through the construction of the LNG plant, in April 2021, the company suspended the project after Islamist guerrillas seized the nearby town of Palma, killing over a thousand people, including the staff of some of TotalEnergies’ subcontractors.

TotalEnergies has always said that the project would only commence when the security situation had stabilised. With a total cost of around US$20 billion and 13 million tonnes per year of LNG capacity, this will be Mozambique’s largest ever investment, and will likely be followed by a second plant to be built on the same site by ExxonMobil and its partners.

Currently, the only production in the Rovuma basin comes from Eni’s Coral Sul deepwater Floating LNG plant, although Eni is moving to install a second FLNG offshore at Coral Norte, thus avoiding the onshore security issues that have plagued the project of its French rival.

Force majeure to be lifted at last?

Finally, there seems to be some progress. Le Monde reported last week that TotalEnergies will lift force majeure on the LNG project shortly, whilst Africa Intelligence (and Baird Maritime’s own sources) report that some work has already restarted at the site on the Afungi peninsula.

This restart will enable TotalEnergies to contract vessels and rigs for the long-delayed development drilling campaign with up to two years of work for two drillships being anticipated to provide feedstock for the LNG plant, starting work in late 2026 or 2027. Saipem is the lead contractor for the engineering procurement and construction of the LNG plant.

More killings, unfortunately

This is not to say that all is peaceful in Mozambique, only that TotalEnergies thinks it has been able to ringfence and secure its operations at the LNG site near Palma.

Only last week, suspected Islamic State-linked insurgents again attacked the town of Mocimboa da Praia, killing at least five civilians and kidnapping others. Zitamar News reported four of the victims were beheaded after the insurgents went from house to house, and the fifth victim, a woman, was shot.

Witnesses told the publication that members of the Rwanda Defence Forces responded to the insurgent incursion by launching two grenades, which forced the attackers to retreat.

The same neighbourhood of the town had been hit by insurgents on September 7. Mocimboa da Praia is approximately 70 kilometres away from the LNG plant site.

The next day the jihadis struck again and Zitamar reported that one woman died and three people were abducted during a lightning raid on the district headquarters of Nangade in Cabo Delgado province on the night of Tuesday, September 23.

Mozambique needs to establish peace not just by fortifying the LNG site, but either by militarily defeating the Islamic State rebels, or by achieving a political deal with them.

Neither seems especially likely in the short term, and sadly, we can expect more killing and more suffering for the long immiserated civilian population of Cabo Delgado.

Less, less, less at ICBC?

There are more more more discounts for the remaining laid up Bourbon vessels that Chinese lender ICBC is trying to sell via a protracted online auction process.

Reports suggest that the buyer of the modern PSV Bourbon Calm, sold for just over US$20 million earlier in the month, may have been Bourbon itself.

Nothing sold in last week’s auctions, so the remaining four vessels have been discounted by 10 per cent for the next bidding round on October 10. The derelict subsea vessel Bourbon Evolution 803, which has been cold stacked for years in Abidjan, is now priced at US$15.5 million. The laid-up supply vessel Bourbon Liberty 153 and the anchor handlers Bourbon Liberty 206 and 209 are also further reduced.

One more auction and I think perhaps a few more rounds will be needed to clear the remaining trio. You can track the progress of the auctions here.

More subsea cable protection for Italy

We can reveal that the Italian Navy is beginning a tender for a subsea support vessel to improve the country’s defences against Russian meddling against pipelines and subsea cables. This is most timely and surely provides an opportunity for Italy’s bizarrely named domestic ROV operator Gaymarine (I jest not; click the link here) based in Lomazzo in Lombardy to expand its sales, and for vessel owner Next Geo to flip one of its fleet to the navy.

Navalnews.com has the scoop on the Italian tender for the second hand subsea vessel here. The urgent need for western governments to increase their naval subsea intervention capabilities was highlighted by us in 2023.

With Prysmian awarded a massive US$500 million contract to build a subsea power cable between Tunisia and Italy, the timing in Rome to acquire greater subsea capability to protect its underwater infrastructure looks perfect.

Our call for Canberra to follow the UK, US, France and now Italy by investing in ROV support and cable repair vessel capacity appears to remain unheeded.

The threats are real

Last week, the Financial Times ran this excellent piece on the Russian spy ship Yantar conducting surveillance against western subsea infrastructure. Yantar is operated by Glavnoye Upravlenie Glubokovodnikh Issledovanii (GUGI) from a top secret, GPS-jammed base in the Kola Peninsula.

AIS and radar tracking shows that the ship has a tendency to find itself in the vicinity of subsea cables where it proceeds to loiter for reasons unknown.

It is not the only ship with connections to Russia to find itself in the spotlight.

What is Oslo Carrier 3 doing?

Over the weekend, Danish investigative journalists ran a piece on the ostensibly Norwegian ship Oslo Carrier 3, which flies the flag of Madeira in Portugal, but apparently has a full Russian crew on board. The ship was located a few kilometres from Copenhagen Airport during the recent drone attack that shut the airport down last week.

Danwatch says that the ship’s owners Oslo Bulk (which is owned by a group of mainly Nordic investors) have previously collaborated with Russia’s oldest paramilitary group, the RSB Group. The group is sanctioned in the US, EU, and the UK and seems to have close ties to Russia’s intelligence services.

There is also evidence of at least one Russian national in the management of Oslo Bulk and connections to the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

The ship is 107 metres long and was built in 2011 (data here). I must say that everything looks legitimate on the company’s website and Oslo Bulk has put out a statement saying that the whole situation is just a misunderstanding and that it is perfectly normal to use Russian seamen in Baltic waters because of their ice experience.

The managers emphasise that all ten of their general cargo vessels are classed by DNV and insured by Gard, and that Oslo Carrier 3 was inspected by the authorities upon arrival at its next port of call in Lithuania last week, with nothing untoward found. 

More, more, more unfortunate locations

Unfortunately, Oslo Carrier 3 appears to have been in the vicinity of no less than three suspicious situations, according to Danwatch. First, it was in the vicinity of the Russian cargo ship Ursa Major, which sank in mysterious circumstances in the Western Mediterranean in December 2024, possibly due to sabotage.

Oslo Carrier 3 refused to take the seafarers from the sinking Russian ship on board, leaving them to be rescued by a Spanish vessel, according to Meduza. Why exactly?

Then, it was in the vicinity of a drone incident in Køge Bay near Copenhagen in January 2025, according to Berlingske, when witnesses reported drones of unknown provenance rising from the sea and flying over the marina. Now, it was near the hybrid attack at Copenhagen Airport last week, as even the owners admit.

Surely the Russian crew could not be more than innocent witnesses to several important hybrid operations by chance alone? The ship seems very unlucky in where it finds itself.

Whilst the west continues to face multiple challenges from Moscow, both covert and overt, one country is taking more measures to limit Russian state revenues.

More, more, more Ukrainian strikes in Russia

The Ukrainian armed forces has demonstrated that the best way to combat the "dark fleet" of tankers is to shut off the supply of the Russian oil that they transport. As of last count, around 20 per cent of Russia’s refinery capacity has been hit and damaged by air drones.

Now sea drones have attacked Russian oil export facilities, following on from the effective air drone strikes on the export facilities at at Primorsk and Ust Luga in the Baltic earlier this month.

Last week, uncrewed surface vessels operated by Defence Intelligence of Ukraine attacked Russian oil terminals in Novorossiysk and Tuapse on September 24, shutting down exports from Transneft, Russia’s national oil pipeline company, and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near Novorossiysk in the Black Sea coast.

Together, these Russian oil terminals points can export up to two million barrels of crude per day, including crude from Kazakhstan from Chevron operated fields there. Ukrainian naval drones can be seen blowing up the oil-loading jetty at the Black Sea port of Tuapse (Kanal13 footage).

Erratic and inaccurate heavy machine gun fire by Russian forces caused damage to residential buildings, which can be seen in this shorter video from bystanders. The “spray and play” response from the defenders destroyed several cars and sparked panic among the population in Novorossiysk, Tuapse and Sochi, according to Ukrayinska Pravda.

More, more, more attacks mean less, less, less Russian oil exports. Perhaps Ukrainian spy chief Kyrylo Budanov can turn his attention to GUGI and Oslo Carrier 3 next. What is happening there?

Background reading

Our previous coverage of Mozambique’s LNG projects and how the western oil companies working in this poor and troubled land have to navigate complex political infighting in Maputo, rebel attacks and corruption scandals is here.

Reuters' coverage of the impact of Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel exports can be read here.