South Africa’s Sasol Ltd. has a two-pronged strategy on behalf of Mozambique, it seems. It hopes to become the first commercial oil producer in the country and wants to extend an existing gas pipeline that will increase exports to neighboring South Africa, reports Bloomberg.

Sasol is already looking for contractors to build a 15,000b/d capacity oil plant that will also produce gas and liquid petroleum gas.

As for the extension to South Africa, the company proposes building a 127 kilometer pipeline across the provinces of Gaza and Inhambane meant to feed Sasol’s plants over the border.

Sasol has been in Mozambique since 2004.

Previously India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and its partners had announced that they would invest about $24 billion to extract natural gas from a giant field in Mozambique, said the Economic Times.

The gas would then be converted it into liquid fuel (LNG) for export to India.

A senior consortium explained that, by law, the “cost of bringing the gas field to production as well as building of liquefaction (LNG) plant will be cost recoverable i.e. all investments will be recouped from sale of gas first before profits are shared with Mozambique government”.

If it goes through the project will have a capacity of 20 million tonnes of LNG annually, putting on a par with major gas producers like Qatar.