The Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline materializes to the chagrin of the Algiers regime
Due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Africa's gas reserves have increasingly become "the object of desire", so to speak, and they are attracting more and more attention. A boon for the European Union (EU) which is “desperately looking for gas” to replace the one supplied by Russia. In this context of crisis, two gas pipeline projects aimed at transporting gas from Nigeria, a giant producer in this field, to North Africa and then to Europe, have seen the light here and there.
Thus, on the Algerian side, a born-dead project for a 4,000 km gas pipeline, called the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP), extending from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger, is still at a standstill, while that the one on which King Mohammed VI of Morocco and the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, agreed four years ago, remains topical due to its concrete nature and certain horizons.
In short, the Nigeria-Morocco gas transmission project along the Atlantic coast which, on paper, must cover nearly 5,660 km and cross more than ten countries to eventually be connected to the European market via the coasts of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco, is most plausible.
To return to the TSGP put on the back burner by Nigeria, there is cause for serious concern for Algeria. And for good reason, Morocco is building a solid alliance with Nigeria to carry out a strategic mega-project for the future of natural gas for Europe and the world. It is because the acquaintance, estimated at the East of Eden to the detriment of the interests of the senile regime of Algiers, is slowly and surely taking shape to the detriment of the executive of the Walter & Strafford puppets made in Algeria and which leads in vain discussions since 2002 for a lesser gas pipeline project crossing the Sahel region (Nigeria, Niger Algeria), a "very little for me" in view of the security threat that the pipeline incurs due to sand terrorism .
The purpose of the latter would be to re-export the gas in which case it would then flow to Europe using the existing infrastructures allowing the transport of Algerian gas to Spain or Italy. So much for the planted decor. Otherwise, this beginning of the week in the Nigerien capital Abuja, a tripartite meeting between the three States concerned by the TSGP took place.
Algeria's Energy Minister, Mohamed Arkab in a role of did you see me, and in his desperation to brag about his junk to the detriment of whom it may concern, declared: "Our pipeline is safer and it is economically viable . While the other pipeline (Nigeria-Morocco), which would cross 12 countries over a distance of more than 6,000 km, part of which would cross the Atlantic, is more complicated”.
“His funding is also unclear. On the other hand, Algeria has the means and is willing to finance a large part of the trans-Saharan gas pipeline,” he boasted in statements to a German newspaper, Der Spiegel, not to name him.
So we see Algiers wants at all costs to reactivate a born-dead project even if it means jeopardizing it by declaring “oh chimeras“ that “the gas pipeline can be completed in three years and we can transport 20 to 30 billion cubic meters of gas from Nigeria.
Except that Nigeria is not very inclined to this option. Our Bonhomme was quick to curb his ardor a day later by declaring at the end of the meeting in Nigeria that "it was agreed to continue the consultations through the technical team, formed during this meeting and responsible for drawing up all the clauses, as well as the technical and financial studies and the feasibility studies relating to the realization of the TSGP”. It is that the senile regime of Algiers in its dreams, expects that Nigeria could supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year through this installation
On the other hand, on the West-Maritime side of the affair, a more optimistic tone is in order at the start of the summer of 2022. In fact, things are materializing, Nigeria and Morocco have decided to entrust the attribution the feasibility contract for the preliminary technical studies of the project to link the two countries by sea to the Australian engineering company WorleyParsons.
That is to say, things are moving forward. Even more, the Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, recently announced that the Federal Executive Council (FEC), a government authority chaired by the Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, has given the green light to the NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) to conclude an agreement with ECOWAS for the realization of the Morocco-Nigeria gas pipeline project which, moreover, was the subject of a section of the Royal message of Monday, June 20, addressed to the participants in the Launching Conference of the African Sovereign Investors Forum (ASIF).
On the other hand, about ten days ago, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for African Cooperation and Moroccans Living Abroad, Nasser Bourita, underlined in the presence of the Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, during a press briefing on the sidelines of the meeting of ministers of Atlantic African States, that the construction of the Morocco-Nigeria pipeline “will be a model of regional integration and will change the characteristics of Atlantic Africa”. That is to say if this materializes and that the Algerian competition is only a splash in the water.
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