Nigeria and Morocco are still looking for funds to finance a mega pipeline project to bring Nigerian gas to North Africa and Europe, the Nigerian Oil minister said.
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Africa’s gas reserves have come under increasing scrutiny, with the European Union in particular looking for alternatives to its gas supplies from Russia.
Four years ago, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari agreed on a mega-project to transport gas along the Atlantic coast for more than 3,000 km. An agreement between the two countries was first signed in 2016.
Nigerian Oil Minister Timipre Sylva said the pipeline would be an extension of a pipeline that has been carrying gas from southern Nigeria to Benin, Ghana and Togo since 2010. “We want to continue this same pipeline to Morocco along the coast. Today, (the project) is still under study,” Sylva said Monday.
For now, Sylva said, no agreement on financing has been reached. “There is a lot of international interest but we have not yet identified the investors we want to work with.”
There has long been interest in bringing Nigerian gas to North Africa, with Algeria having led discussions in 2002 for a similar pipeline project through the Sahel region, but the project never materialized.
Nigeria, an OPEC member, has huge gas reserves, the first in Africa and the seventh largest in the world.