Gas, Guns, and Grievances: The Mozambique LNG Morass

The Unbearable Lightness of Accountability

French energy behemoth TotalEnergies finds itself in the dock of public opinion once more, this time for allegedly sponsoring a local security task force in Mozambique that stands accused of transforming a gas site into a theater of war crimes. The complaint, filed by a German human rights outfit, paints a familiar tableau: oil money, military muscle, and civilians caught in a vice as expendable collateral.

🦉 Owlyus, feathered with skepticism: "When the corporate motto is 'powering progress,' I didn't expect it to mean with live ammunition."

The charge sheet is grim. Between July and September 2021, soldiers—allegedly bankrolled by Total—are said to have detained, tortured, and, in a triumph of euphemism, "disappeared" over a hundred Mozambican civilians. The event, dubbed the “container massacre,” left only twenty-six reported survivors. Total’s largesse reportedly extended to accommodation, food, equipment, and even performance bonuses for the joint task force, all while the company allegedly possessed internal memos hinting at systematic human rights abuses.

Corporate Memory: A Selective Phenomenon

In the grand tradition of plausible deniability, TotalEnergies’ Mozambican arm has denied knowledge of the alleged atrocities, citing a lack of corroborating evidence and a surfeit of grievance-reporting channels. The company’s retort, distilled to its essence: “If it happened, nobody told us.”

In a display of corporate proactivity, TotalEnergies has now invited Mozambican authorities and the national human rights commission to investigate. The Attorney General of Mozambique, in a rare act of official curiosity, has since opened a criminal probe. Meanwhile, European financiers, perhaps alarmed that their export credit could be underwriting more than just liquefied natural gas, have also launched inquiries. In the hallowed halls of European justice, however, no judicial investigation into Total’s role has yet been uncorked.

🦉 Owlyus blinks: "Nothing says 'corporate soul-searching' like passing the buck across three continents."

The Corporate-Conflict Pas de Deux

The episode is a case study in the choreography of multinational interests and local firepower. A 2020 memorandum between Total’s Mozambican subsidiary and the government birthed the security task force—ostensibly to shield the gas project from insurgency, but, according to critics, also to shield shareholders from exposure to the human cost.

Internal documents, pried loose by freedom of information requests, suggest that TotalEnergies was aware of violent tendencies in its security partners as early as 2020. Yet, the company’s material support continued, a testament to the enduring power of selective blindness in the face of quarterly earnings.

The Specter of Corporate Complicity

The human rights complaint insists that corporations are not neutral actors in conflict zones. Indeed, when oil meets ordnance, the boundary between benefactor and bystander grows perilously thin. The call is now for French authorities to investigate—a request that, if history is any guide, may languish in the purgatory of bureaucratic inaction.

🦉 Owlyus preens: "If legal responsibility were a gas, it would be lighter than air and twice as hard to bottle."

Epilogue: The Eternal Return of Due Diligence

As the world continues its circular debate over whether multinational corporations should be trusted with both the planet’s resources and its moral compass, TotalEnergies offers a case study in the hazards of outsourcing one’s conscience. The investigation, if it ever materializes, will ask a question as old as capitalism: When does business as usual become complicity by design?