Tanzania's finance minister says US$42bn LNG deal is 'almost there'

Tanzania expects to finalise agreements on major investment projects in the coming months, including a US$42 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, Finance Minister Khamis Mussa Omar told Reuters, according to a report carried by the Tanzanian newspaper The Citizen on 13 October 2026. "It's almost there," Omar said of the LNG deal.

The project is led by Equinor and Shell. Other partners include ExxonMobil, Pavilion Energy, Medco Energi and the state-owned Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC). It is expected to facilitate the development of 47.13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves.

Officials had expected the LNG agreement to be signed before June, The Citizen said. In January, Kitila Mkumbo, Minister of State in the President's Office for Planning and Investment, told a briefing in London that "we expect this to be signed before June", according to the industry website Hydrocarbon Processing, which published his remarks on 27 January. The website said the project had stalled because of proposed government changes to a financial agreement reached in 2023.

Omar also said Tanzania was close to agreements on two critical minerals projects but declined to give details, according to the Reuters report in The Citizen. He said US investors were particularly interested in energy and critical minerals.

The government aims to nearly double electricity generation capacity to 8,000 megawatts by 2030 and to raise the share of energy from sources it classifies as clean, including hydropower, solar, wind and natural gas, to about 75 per cent, according to the report.

On funding, the report said Tanzania finances about two-thirds of its TSh62.3 trillion (US$23.7 billion) budget through domestic revenue. The government has yet to decide whether to issue an international bond.

Omar said the government was assessing whether to seek a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programme, with a decision expected by June. Tanzania's previous US$1.7 billion IMF programme ended in July.