Mozambique will issue a $68-million oil exploration tender before the end of September, its mineral resources minister said on Monday.

Minister Esperanca Bias also said the country aimed to start using its own oil from 2014.

The contract would cover either the southern Inhambane province or the Rovuma Basin. Companies from South Africa, Brazil or the United States were likely to win the tender and would have to invest the money before the end of the year.

"The tender, just one and not two as per our initial plans, will definitely be launched very soon at a cost of $-68 million for research and we will want results by December," she told Reuters in an interview.

"It will be either in the southern Inhambane province or the northern Cabo Delgado. We have geological conditions for oil and gas, (therefore) and we need to make serious studies."

The Pande gas field is a proven natural gas deposit with reserves of more than 3.5 trillion cubic feet.

"If we find oil today, we need to start production and we can only talk of consumption in 2014, and depending on the quantity, we will also export it," said Bias.

She said a specific date on the tender had not been decided.

"But it will be before the end of September."

Mozambique's government has liberalised foreign investment rules in the energy sector in a bid to rebuild and diversify its agriculture-based economy, which was devastated by a civil war that followed independence from Portugal in 1975.

FOREIGN INTEREST

Oil exploration slowed to a trickle during the conflict as foreign investors looked elsewhere in Africa. A number of companies have begun exploring for oil and natural gas in Mozambique since the end of the war in the early 1990s.

Analysts have said Mozambique has more potential as a gas producer and could find itself in a position to export supplies to its neighbours, including Malawi and South Africa.

The southern African country has ambitious oil exploration targets.

"We are receiving a lot of interest from multinational companies, but given the size of the country, which is very big, we will decide on the company that can give us results by December, which will be either from South Africa, Brazil or the United States of America," she said.

South African petrochemical group Sasol completed construction of a $1,2 billion natural gas pipeline from the Pande and Teman gas fields to its synthetic fuel plant in Secunda, South Africa in 2004.

The government opened a bidding round in July 2005 for the exploration of several offshore blocks in an area known geologically as the Rovuma Basin, named for the Rovuma river that forms Mozambique's northern boundary with Tanzania.

A group of international oil and gas firms have signed deals worth about $300 million to prospect in the area, which has been divided into seven exploration blocs by the government.

Canada's Oslo-listed Artumas Group Inc, the US-based oil firm Anadarko Petroleum Corp, Petronas of Malaysia and and Italy's ENI are among firms active in the basin.

Mozambique, which has an agriculture-based and tourism- oriented economy, hopes the exploration will significantly reduce oil imports and lead to exports.