Greater Tortue's First Cargo Makes Senegal and Mauritania LNG Exporters. The Domestic Gas Promise Is the Real Test

On 17 April 2025 bp announced that it had loaded the first cargo of liquefied natural gas from Phase 1 of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim project, which straddles the maritime border between Mauritania and Senegal. The gas is produced from wells in water depths of up to 2,850 metres, about 120 kilometres offshore, processed on a floating production vessel around 40 kilometres offshore, and liquefied on the Gimi floating LNG vessel, 10 kilometres from the coast.

Once fully commissioned, Phase 1 is expected to produce around 2.4 million tonnes of LNG a year. bp's partners are Kosmos Energy and the two national oil companies, Petrosen of Senegal and SMH of Mauritania. The governments have declared it a project of strategic national importance. The start of exports is a milestone that has been a long time coming. The discoveries were made in the middle of the last decade and the investment decision was taken at the end of 2018, with first gas originally expected years earlier than it arrived.

Global LNG supply is set to grow strongly over the second half of the decade as large expansion projects in Qatar and the United States come online. That wave is expected to soften prices from the elevated levels seen after 2022. For Senegal and Mauritania, the export revenue is meaningful relative to the size of their economies, but it arrives in a market where the price outlook has weakened since the project was sanctioned. bp says that an allocation of gas volumes will be made available to the domestic markets in both countries when they are ready to receive it.

Senegal's government, elected in 2024, came into office promising to review oil and gas contracts to secure a fairer share for the state. The first GTA cargo is an engineering achievement in very deep water and a political milestone for two countries that have waited a decade for it.