The Angolan liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, which had a capacity of 5,2 million tons a year, was on track to be completed in 2012, Total senior vice-president for exploration and production in Africa Jacques Marraud des Grottes said on Wednesday.

Addressing the sixteenth Africa Oil Week in Cape Town on Wednesday, Des Grottes said that the project had initially commenced in 2007 and that, to date, about 50% of the development work had been completed.

The project was reported to involve an investment of $10-billion.

The Angolan LNG project was a joint-venture initiative involving the State oil company of Angola, Sonangol, and its affiliates of Chevron, Total, BP, and ENI.

The project aimed to commercialise dedicated Angolan natural gas resources by collecting and transporting gas from blocks located offshore Angola to an onshore single-train liquefaction plant located in the Soyo region, south of the Congo river, in Angola's Zaire province.

Angola had over ten-trillion cubic feet of gas reserves available for the LNG project, which had been designed to receive some one-billion cubic feet a day of associated natural gas and produce approximately 5,2-million tons a year of LNG and related liquid products.

It was also expected that 125-million standard cubic feet a day of natural gas would be available for domestic use in Angola, with the balance of the products to be exported.

As part of the Angola LNG project, Total, through its subsidiary Total Gas & Power North America, signed a regasified natural gas purchase agreement in December 2007 for 13,6% of the quantities to be delivered to the Gulf LNG Clean Energy terminal in Mississippi in the US.

The Angolan LNG was the latest project in the Total Group's LNG portfolio.

Total also produced LNG in Indonesia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Nigeria and Norway.