Frontier Services Group Ltd., the Hong Kong-based company founded by Erik Prince, has decided to quit a logistics joint venture with Mozambique’s national oil company, even as the country readies to receive about $60 billion of investments in natural gas export projects.
The Chinese majority shareholders in FSG decided to withdraw from the partnership that was called ENHL – Frontier Service Group Lda., Omar Mitha, chairman of Mozambique’s state-owned Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos EP, told reporters Tuesday in Maputo, the capital. FSG is yet to formally communicate the decision, he said. The company didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“The partnership no longer exists but it was their decision,” Mitha said. “They’re are no longer interested in the business. We’re OK with that.”
Prince, who founded and sold private military company Blackwater Worldwide, which won hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from the U.S. government during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, also had a fishing joint venture with a Mozambican state-owned company called Ematum SA, which has faced delays.
Prince had also planned on providing security services in the southeast African nation, he told reporters in 2017. Companies including ExxonMobil plan on investing about $60 billion in massive offshore natural gas resources discovered nearly a decade ago off Mozambique’s northern coastline.
FSG in July this year registered a security services company called FSG Mozambique Segurança Lda. in the country, with Lucílio Matsinha as a 51% shareholder, according to the government gazette. Prince is a minority shareholder in FSG and an executive director.