SENEGAL'S GAS ECONOMY: LNG EXPORT COMMERCIALISATION AND DOMESTIC GAS-TO-POWER DEVELOPMENT

Summary

Senegal has, within the space of eighteen months, become a producing hydrocarbon nation on two fronts simultaneously: as an LNG exporter through the cross-border Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) project with Mauritania, and as an aspiring domestic gas-to-power economy built around Sangomar associated gas and the newly renationalized Yakaar-Teranga field. GTA reached first gas in December 2024, first LNG in February 2025 and its first export cargo in April 2025; by December 2025 the floating LNG facility was running at its 2.7 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) nameplate capacity, and Kosmos Energy expects cargo liftings to roughly double in 2026, aided by tight Atlantic Basin LNG pricing linked to Middle East supply risk.
The defining development of 2026, however, is not export ramp-up but a structural pivot toward domestic gas prioritization. In April 2026, state oil company PETROSEN assumed full, uncompensated control of the 20–25 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) Yakaar-Teranga field after Kosmos Energy withdrew, following BP's earlier 2023 exit from the same asset. Both departures trace to an identical structural cause: international operators sought LNG-export-benchmarked returns, while the Senegalese government insisted the field be developed primarily for domestic power, fertilizer and industrial use. The government has been explicit that this is not nationalization the license had a contractual expiry and Kosmos elected to exit rather than fund unassisted development — but the episode nonetheless signals that Dakar will now condition upstream gas access on alignment with its domestic industrialization agenda.
On the export side, Senegal's commercialization model remains conservative and de-risked: GTA Phase 1's entire LNG offtake is contracted to a single buyer, BP Gas Marketing, under long-term arrangements, insulating Senegal and Mauritania from spot-market exposure but also limiting the country's own commercial upside and market-access experience. A Phase 2 expansion (2.5–3.0 mtpa incremental, roughly $5 billion) remains at a conceptual stage, and the broader Greater Cayar/MSGBC basin estimated to hold up to 40 Tcf of resource in aggregate is only lightly explored, with PETROSEN launching its first independent $100 million onshore exploration campaign in 2026.
On the domestic side, the government's stated ambition is to end natural gas and fuel-oil imports for power generation by end-2026, saving an estimated CFA140 billion ($227 million) annually, and to raise gas-fired generation to roughly 75% of installed capacity. This rests on GTA's contracted domestic set-aside of approximately 35 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscf/d) to Senegal, Sangomar associated gas, and eventually Yakaar-Teranga Phase 1 (targeted at 300 mmscf/d). A pipeline of gas-fired plants Cap des Biches (366 MW), Saint Louis (255 MW, expandable to 500 MW), Sandiara (360 MW) and the planned Gandon plant (250 MW) is being built out alongside a proposed 400 km domestic gas transmission network, though most of this infrastructure is not yet fully operational and financing remains partly unresolved.
Strategically, Senegal is threading a difficult needle: it must honor bankable export contracts that justified billions of dollars of foreign investment in GTA, while simultaneously re-directing its largest undeveloped field toward a domestic-first model that has already cost it two international partners. The near-term outlook (through 2027–2028) favors continued GTA export ramp-up and incremental domestic gas-to-power delivery; the medium-term outlook (2030–2040) is far more contingent on whether PETROSEN now sole custodian of Yakaar-Teranga can secure the $7.5 billion in financing and technical partnership needed to bring that field on stream, and on whether Senegal's downstream industrialisation ambitions (fertiliser, petrochemicals, steel, cement) can attract capital without the export-market benchmarking that IOCs typically require.