TotalEnergies restarted its $20 billion Mozambique LNG project on 29 January 2026 - before an audit commissioned by the Mozambican government had finished its work, and before a word of its findings had been made public. That audit, conducted by UK consultancy Bayphase, subsequently found it could not document roughly $2 billion of the $5 billion in costs TotalEnergies claimed were owed to it. The two sides are now negotiating over a gap that, if resolved in TotalEnergies’ favour, would be recovered from project revenues before Mozambique ever calculates its tax receipts. No document in the public record settles the question of who pays.
By Samuel Baker BYANSI (M28 Investigates) | Forbidden Stories Consortium
The letter landed on the desk of a president. Dated 24 October 2025, it ran to the point quickly, and it carried a number large enough to reshape a national budget: $4.5 billion. Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive of TotalEnergies, was writing to Daniel Chapo, President of the Republic of Mozambique, to tell him two things. The first was good news, or meant to sound like it: after four and a half years frozen, the $20 billion Mozambique LNG project was coming back to life. The second was the invoice.
Strip the diplomacy out of Pouyanné’s letter and it said this: TotalEnergies was lifting force majeure, and it wanted the government to sign off on a $4.5 billion “incremental cost” adjustment, covering the costs the company said it had incurred during the suspension, plus a ten-year extension of the development and production period, as “partial compensation” for the years lost. The letter has never been released in full; its contents are known because the German environmental organisations urgewald and Deutsche Umwelthilfe quoted from it in their 11 December 2025 open letter to Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch.
What made the figure combustible was the mechanism for recovering it. As the Institute for Security Studies set out in March 2026, TotalEnergies "intends to recover these losses from future project revenues before paying taxes." Every dollar Total recouped this way was a dollar Mozambique would never tax. Against a project the government says could ultimately deliver $35 billion over its lifetime, the fight over a $2 billion verification gap is, in practical terms, a fight over who absorbs the unverified difference, and who never sees it taxed.
The Number Nobody Can Verify
The $4.5 billion figure that Pouyanné put to Chapo in October 2025 was not accompanied by a publicly available breakdown. That calculation, what TotalEnergies says it cost to maintain the project in suspension, weather, insure, and eventually prepare for restart over four and a half years, is what the Mozambican government commissioned Bayphase to audit. The consultancy’s task was to check the receipts.
What Bayphase found, according to Bloomberg on 27 May 2026 (citing a person with knowledge of the matter) and Lusa on 28 May 2026 (citing sources close to the work), was that of just over $5 billion submitted by TotalEnergies, only about 60 per cent, roughly $3 billion, could be documented. The remaining $2 billion sat unverified.
A Mozambican government source told Lusa that the audit “is now in its final phase, and we regret that we cannot comment on the work being carried out at this time.” That moment of comment had not arrived when the restart ceremony was held. “While the cost-verification process is ongoing, the project will not stop,” Chapo told reporters. “Restart is a reality.” Pouyanné, at the same event, was breezy about the gap the auditors couldn’t account for. “These small matters,” he said, “will be resolved as per our contracts and according to the rule of law.” Both men were quoted by Reuters and reproduced in TotalEnergies’ own press release that day.
“These small matters will be resolved as per our contracts and according to the rule of law.”
- Patrick Pouyanné, TotalEnergies CEO, at the 29 January 2026 restart ceremony, Afungi
The Scale of the Dispute
The disputed $4.5 billion is roughly a quarter of the project’s entire $20 billion final-investment-decision value. Because the recovery mechanism works by deducting costs from gross revenues before any tax calculation, the fight between Total’s claimed $4.5 billion and Bayphase’s documented ~$3 billion is, stripped to its essence, a fight over who absorbs the roughly $2 billion in between. If TotalEnergies wins that argument, Mozambique never taxes those revenues. If the government holds firm, TotalEnergies absorbs the loss or passes it to its shareholders.
The resettlement dimension adds a further layer. The urgewald/DUH open letter to Siemens Energy, signed by more than 30 civil-society organisations from 10 countries, documents that approximately 1,300 complaints have been received from gas-affected families in at least eight communities, concerning unpaid compensation and non-allocation of replacement fields. TotalEnergies has publicly claimed the land-based resettlement process is complete. The communities, and their legal advocates, dispute this.
The Funders' Divergence
The backers of the project are not moving in the same direction. On 1 December 2025, a UK parliamentary written statement (Hansard, UIN HCWS1111) confirmed that Britain was withdrawing its $1.15 billion UK Export Finance commitment. The Netherlands cut its Atradius DSB cover the same day, citing a November 2025 report from the Clingendael Institute's Conflict Research Unit that documented human rights abuses by Mozambican security forces in connection with the LNG project.
Washington moved in the opposite direction. The US Export-Import Bank approved $4.7 billion in support in March 2025. Friends of the Earth filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in July 2025, arguing the approval was unlawful; the case was pending at time of writing. Meanwhile, Siemens Energy’s 2020 contract, six SGT-800 industrial gas turbines and four boil-off gas compressors, contracted through a joint venture between Saipem and McDermott, remained in force.
The hardware tells its own story. Siemens Energy's 2020 contract, six SGT-800 industrial gas turbines and four boil-off gas compressors, contracted through a joint venture between Saipem and McDermott, remained in force at the time of writing. In response to detailed questions from this consortium, a Siemens Energy spokesperson confirmed that the delivery contract remains in place, that no components have yet been delivered, and that the project had been suspended for five years. The company declined to answer questions about its internal human rights risk assessments or whether it had been informed of the alleged 2021 abuses. It stated that it fulfils contractual obligations "in accordance with binding standards on human rights, environmental and climate protection." The DUH "Turbines for Tyrants" report of December 2025 calculated that Siemens Energy's operating profits from gas turbines more than doubled in 2025, rising from €184 million to €402 million. Urgewald and Deutsche Umwelthilfe have publicly demanded a delivery halt pending an independent human rights investigation. Siemens Energy has made no public commitment to withdraw.
The Fog of Finance
For all the money in motion, the documents that would settle the question stay locked away. The Bayphase audit report is not public. Nor are its terms of reference. The Pouyanné-Chapo letter has been quoted but never released in full. The text of the agreement that underpinned the 29 January restart has not been published. Whether the government has accepted Total’s $4.5 billion figure, accepted part of it, or rejected it outright is impossible to determine from the public record.
Some of that fog may lift from unexpected directions. Britain's parliamentary withdrawal of UK Export Finance and the Friends of the Earth lawsuit against the US Export-Import Bank are both the kind of proceedings that tend to shake loose documents over time.
The strategic context matters too. Natural gas prices have roughly halved since the project was conceived, and the window before a net-zero 2050 market materially shrinks demand is closing. That urgency helps explain why the project restarted before the audit finished.
“The project resumed before the audit was concluded or its findings made public, which raises serious questions about transparency.”
- Institute for Security Studies, March 2026
Accountability
M28 Investigates and Forbidden Stories submitted detailed questions to TotalEnergies SE on the text of the October letter, the basis for the $4.5 billion claim, and the terms of the ten-year extension; to Mozambique LNG; to each consortium partner; to the Office of the President of Mozambique, the Ministry of Finance, and ENH; to the US Export-Import Bank; to Siemens Energy; to UK Export Finance and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; and to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Atradius DSB.
TotalEnergies responded, firmly rejecting all allegations of complicity in the 2021 abuses, stating that Mozambique LNG personnel had been evacuated from the Afungi site before the alleged events occurred and that internal verifications confirmed the company had no knowledge of the allegations at the time. The company said costs incurred during the force majeure period would be treated in accordance with host government agreements and Mozambican law, and declined to confirm or deny the $4.5 billion figure directly. UK Export Finance declined to answer the consortium's specific questions, directing this consortium to the written ministerial statement confirming its withdrawal, published 1 December 2025 (Hansard, UIN HCWS1111). Siemens Energy confirmed its delivery contract remains in force and that no components have been delivered, but declined to answer questions on human rights due diligence. The Mozambican government ministries, the Office of the President, ENH, the US Export-Import Bank, and Atradius DSB did not provide substantive responses at the time of writing.
In the end, the question is brutally simple, even if the answer is not. Someone pays for the missing $2 billion. Whether it is the Mozambican state, through tax receipts it will never collect, or the consortium's shareholders, or some quiet compromise struck between them, is the thing the Bayphase audit will decide, if it is ever allowed to be read.
