A senior official with Mozambique’s National Petroleum Institute, Augusto Macuvele, said that the country will hold its sixth round of oil and gas licensing bids late 2017 or 2018, Reuters reported.

This comes as Mozambique’s National Petroleum Institute government stated that the government awarded six licenses to search for oil and gas, with the potential to drum up about $700m in investments until 2020. Three licenses were awarded to ExxonMobil with Rosneft OAO, and one to a consortium led by Eni that includes Sasol Ltd. and Statoil ASA. Sasol, as well as Delonex Energy working with India Oil , were each given onshore rights, accordingly to Bloomberg.

Mozambique wants to attract investments to exploit huge gas finds in the offshore northern Rovuma basin that could help turn the country into the world’s third-biggest liquefied natural gas exporter in a decade. The fifth bidding round opened in October 2014, and attracted applications for seven of the 15 blocks that were offered. The offshore areas lie in the Angoche Basin and the Zambezi Basin, and onshore in the Mozambique Basin.