Page 4 - DMEA Week 05 2021

DMEA COMMENTARY DMEA

Proposed pipeline route.
Source: Infomediaire.
Nigeria-Morocco gas plans

face steep hurdles

Questions about competing suppliers, demand

forecasts and cost may sink the NMGP project

NIGERIA NIGERIA and Morocco have been discussing Competing proposal
plans for the establishment of a massive natu- Nigeria has been looking into the possibility of
WHAT: ral gas pipeline network connecting more than building a pipeline to North Africa to facilitate
The leaders of Nigeria a dozen African countries for more than four deliveries of gas to Europe for some time.
and Morocco are talking years, and the leaders of both countries recently More specifically, it began holding discus-
up an ambitious gas made clear that they remain strongly interested sions with Algeria on proposals for an over-
pipeline scheme. in the project. land pipeline that would cross through Niger
According to Moroccan press reports, Nige- and terminate on the Mediterranean Sea coast
WHY: rian President Muhammadu Buhari and Moroc- more than 40 years ago. These talks bore little
These shows of support co’s King Mohammed VI discussed the initiative fruit until 2022, when Abuja and Algiers signed
for NMGP have not been during a telephone call on January 31. Both lead- a memorandum of agreement outlining their
accompanied by concrete ers said they were determined to press forward plans for the Trans-Sahara Pipeline (TSP) pro-
progress. with the construction of the Nigeria-Morocco ject. Subsequently, the Nigerian and Algerian
Gas Pipeline (NMGP) and described it as a stra- governments carried out a feasibility study on
WHAT NEXT: tegic project. TSP in 2006 and then teamed up with Niger to
Europe’s net-zero goals Crucially, though, they don’t appear to have sign an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) in
could undercut demand talked in concrete terms about their plans. That 2009.
for West African gas. is, they didn’t say what exactly they intended to Since then, however, the project has lan-
do next to drive the project forward – and this guished. The stall reportedly stems from Abu-
lack of detail may be a portent of problems to ja’s concerns about possible security threats in
come. northern Nigeria and southern Algeria, which

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