LONDON (Reuters) - Shell (LON:RDSa) has made good progress with the Tanzanian government in recent months to advance a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project to tap the East African country's huge gas resources, a Shell executive said on Monday.
"We have seen some real quick progress over the last year compared to what had been a much slower progress before and we continue to be hopeful that we can take this project all the way through to FID (final investment decision) at some stage," Shell's head of integrated gas Wael Sawan said.
The development of Tanzania's vast offshore gas resources has been held up for years due to delays in government licensing agreements, but Sawan told reporters that some fiscal disputes "have now been resolved".
Shell operates Block 1 and Block 4 off Tanzania, which hold 16 trillion cubic feet in estimated recoverable gas. It aims to develop an LNG project together with Norway's Equinor.
Equinor also operates Block 2, in which ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) also holds a stake and which is estimated to hold more than 20 trillion cubic feet of gas.