The Federal Executive Council (FEC) under the Nigerian Presidency has authorized the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to enter into an agreement with ECOWAS for the construction of the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, informed State House officials of the decision after the FEC meeting, chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on Wednesday, June 1, at the Presidential Palace in Abuja.
According to Nigeria’s official news agency, News Agency of Nigerian (NAN), Timipre Sylva said the Nigeria-Morocco pipeline project was still at the initial engineering design stage, after which the projected cost of the project would be determined.
The pipeline will cross about 15 West African countries to Morocco and then to Spain.
The Ministry of Petroleum Resources presented three memos to the Council. In the first memo, the Council authorized NNPC Ltd to sign a memorandum of understanding with ECOWAS for the construction of the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline. This pipeline should supply 15 countries in West Africa with Nigerian gas, to Morocco and, via the Kingdom, to Spain and Europe, he said.
NAN recalls that the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline was proposed in an agreement signed in December 2016 between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Moroccan National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM).
The pipeline would connect Nigerian gas to all West African coastal countries, namely Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania, ending in Tangier, Morocco and Cadiz, Spain.
Last month, Timipre Sylva had disclosed that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia are among the international bodies ready to buy into the Morocco-Nigeria Gas Pipeline project.
Commenting on securing funding partners, the minister said that “there is a lot of international investors interest in the project, but we have not really identified investors that we want to go with,” adding that “we have not totally concluded on the financial arrangement.”
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