FREETOWN: West African leaders on Sunday signed an agreement approving the construction of a gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Morocco at a summit of regional bloc ECOWAS in Sierra Leone\u2019s capital Freetown.<\/p>\n
The roughly 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) will cross 13 countries along Africa\u2019s Atlantic coast, carrying Nigerian gas to Morocco before connecting to the Maghreb-Europe pipeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have already signed the West Africa-Morocco gas pipeline,\u201d said ECOWAS chair Julius Maada Bio said. \u201cDon\u2019t be surprised when the gas comes your way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s state hydrocarbons agency ONHYM and Nigeria\u2019s state oil company NNPC said in a statement that the project aimed to link west Africa\u2019s gas resources to major regional markets.<\/p>\n
It also hopes to \u201cstrengthen the integration of African energy markets and create a new development corridor linking\u201d west Africa, the Sahel, Morocco and Europe.<\/p>\n
The next steps include creating a \u201cproject company\u201d based in Casablanca and a governing authority headquartered in Abuja before investors are brought on board and a final investment decision is taken, they added.<\/p>\n
Construction is expected to begin in 2027, with the first gas deliveries targeted for 2031, said an ONHYM source.<\/p>\n
The project, first proposed during Moroccan King Mohammed VI\u2019s visit to Abuja in 2016, is estimated to cost around $27 billion.<\/p>\n
Its revival has been driven in part by Algeria\u2019s 2022 decision to stop supplying gas to Spain via Morocco after diplomatic ties between Algiers and Rabat broke down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FREETOWN: West African leaders on Sunday signed an agreement approving the construction of a gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Morocco at a summit of regional bloc ECOWAS in Sierra Leone\u2019s capital Freetown. The roughly 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) will cross 13 countries along Africa\u2019s Atlantic coast, carrying Nigerian gas to Morocco before connecting …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100499,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100484\/revisions\/100499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}