Anadarko Petroleum Corp Mozambique Offshore Natural Gas

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation sharply raised its estimate for the amount of natural gas contained in a big field it has found off the coast of Mozambique.  This could be one of the most important natural-gas fields discovered in the last 10 years. Anadarko said it had increased the estimate of recoverable resources from the four discoveries made in its Offshore Area 1 block to between 15 trillion and 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Initially, the Texas-based company had said the field contained six trillion cubic feet, a figure it raised to 10 trillion cubic feet in October. Thirty trillion cubic feet would be enough to meet an entire year's gas consumption by the U.S.

Anadarko, whose partners in the block include Dublin-based Cove Energy PLC and Japan's Mitsui & Co., is the field's operator, with a 36.5% interest.

The announcement came just a month after Eni SpA, the Italian energy giant, announced it had found 22.5 trillion cubic feet of gas off Mozambique's coast—the biggest such exploration discovery in the company's history. Such large resources appear big enough to sustain the construction of a large liquefied-natural-gas, or LNG, plant in Mozambique, catapulting the impoverished former Portuguese colony into the world's major league of gas exporters.

Meanwhile the gas-rich waters offshore Tanzania have recently attracted a number of big players, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Statoil ASA of Norway and BG Group PLC, which is also exploring off Kenya. (WSJ, 11/29/2011)