Bids for pipeline in Morocco and Nigeria to be relaunched in 2025
Morocco plans to move to the next stage in the construction of a major gas pipeline with Nigeria, as bids are scheduled to be launched in 2025 according to the Arab Weekly and sources.
International investors, energy companies, wealth funds and multilateral banks are expected to bid.
The 2025 work plan says the initial phase of the pipeline will pass through Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. During this year, negotiations on the intergovernmental agreement were finished and its ratification by the heads of state was prepared before the end of this year.
The $25 billion project will cover 16 countries, 13 of which are on the African coast and three of which are landlocked, altogether including more than 400 million people
The Moroccan National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines stated that “the strategic Nigeria-Morocco Atlantic African Gas Pipeline project,” which was initiated by King Mohammed VI and former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, and supported by current President Bola Tinubu, “aims to accelerate energy access for all, improve living conditions, foster economic integration in the subregion, and mitigate desertification through a sustainable and reliable gas supply that aligns with the continent’s new environmental protection commitments”.
The pipeline will be linked to the Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline and the European gas network, in addition to supplying natural gas to landlocked countries including Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.
The pipeline’s maximum capacity is expected to reach 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year, and it will allow exports of up to 18 billion cubic metres annually to Europe.
King Mohammed said at the the 15th summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation last May that the pipeline “draws on the same spirit of solidarity, as it aims to achieve regional integration and joint economic emergence and to encourage development dynamics on the Atlantic coast.”
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King Mohammed and Nigeria’s president discussed the African-Atlantic, Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project in a telephone conversation last January.
The royal court issued a statement at the time said that “the project will constitute a strategic lever for regional integration and economic and social development for all West African countries.”
The pipeline project originated back in 2016, when Morocco’s monarch visited Nigeria and met former president Buhari in Abuja.
The Islamic Development Bank and the OPEC Fund for International Development helped fun the initial stages of studies for the pipeline, and the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, has since joined as a partner in the project.
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The pipeline will extend 5,600 kilometres along the West African coast from Nigeria, through Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Senegal and Mauritania to Morocco.
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