The Memorandum of Understanding for the start of the 5,600 km Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline’s construction was signed last week Thursday by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines of Morocco.
Following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries and the Economic Community of West African States in Rabat, Morocco, according to NNPC, the much-anticipated Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project officially got underway.
According to the statement, the two nations and ECOWAS carried out the MoU agreement on the project, which was an important step in achieving the Federal Government’s goal of utilizing Nigeria’s plentiful gas resources.
The NMGP is a 5,600-kilometer gas pipeline project that will eventually connect 13 African nations and supply gas from Nigeria to West African nations all the way up to the Kingdom of Morocco, then to Europe.
Once finished, the project will provide three billion standard cubic feet of gas per day along the West African coast from Nigeria to Morocco, via Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and the Gambia.
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Mele Kyari, the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, signed the contract on behalf of Nigeria, while Dr. Amina Benkhadra, the Director-General of Morocco’s National Office for Hydrocarbons and Mines, did the same.
At the MoU signing ceremony, Kyari gave a speech in which he referred to the development as a crucial turning point in the NMGP project, where all of the major players had come together to reconfirm their commitment to seeing the project through.
Kyari thanked President Muhammadu Buhari and His Royal Majesty, King Mohammed VI of Morocco for entrusting NNPC Ltd and ONHYM with the strategic project and said that from the project’s inception to this point, coordinated efforts by the governments of both countries had resulted in the successes recorded thus far.
The Federal Government and the Kingdom of Morocco, he claimed, would gain tremendously from the project’s completion since it would do more than just produce gas; it would also energize the nations along the path.
The NMGP project was conceived during King Mohammed VI of Morocco’s visit to Nigeria in December 2016. It is a joint effort between the Federal Government and the Kingdom of Morocco.
Its objectives include monetizing Nigeria’s enormous natural gas resources to increase domestic revenue, diversify Nigeria’s gas export routes, and end gas flaring around the nation.
The pipeline will start in Nigeria at Brass Island and end in North Africa, where it will be connected to the already-existing Maghreb European Pipeline, which runs from Algeria via Morocco to Spain.
