Nigerian-Morocco gas pipeline to help Europe deal with energy crisis

An investment decision on a $25 billion gas pipeline from Nigeria to Morocco that could supply the fuel to Europe will be taken next year, the head of the West African nation’s state oil company said, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Co. and Morocco’s National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines signed a memorandum of understanding last month that inched the long-gestating project closer to reality. The conduit is one of two such initiatives the NNPC is promoting in an effort to capitalize on European demand for new sources of gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We will take a final investment decision next year,” NNPC Chief Executive Officer Mele Kyari said in an interview in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Discussions around financing are ongoing, he said, without disclosing the institutions interested in backing the 5,600-kilometer (3,840-mile) pipeline that would deliver gas to 11 countries along the African coast on its way to Morocco, before connecting to Spain or Italy.

The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States is also a signatory to the MOU.

The project will cost $20-25 billion to build and will be constructed in phases, according to Kyari, who anticipates the first segment would take three years to finish and the others five years. Following a previous agreement in 2018, the Moroccan state agency MAP said the pipeline could take as long as 25 years to complete. Nigeria’s gas exports are currently limited to shipments from Nigeria LNG Ltd., a joint venture between NNPC and international energy companies including Shell Plc and Eni SpA.

Nigeria possesses Africa’s largest proven gas reserves at about 200 trillion cubic feet, most of which is untapped, flared or re-injected into oil wells. The government says it wants to monetize much more of that resource, for domestic use and export, to replace crude as the country’s key commodity. Quadrupling gas production in the next four years is “very realizable,” according to Kyari.

The NNPC has also revived a longstanding proposal for a separate transcontinental gas pipeline that would travel about 4,400 kilometers through the Sahara Desert to Algeria for onward transport to Europe.