“The Moroccan-Nigerian Gas Pipeline Project Is Not Feasible.”

According to Spanish media reports, the Moroccan-Nigerian gas pipeline is a project that is “not feasible due to the geopolitical turmoil and the costs it requires,” in a calm reading of a project that has received more than it deserves from media coverage in Morocco and abroad.
El Independiente explained that this project is aimed at achieving narrow political gains for the Moroccan regime, and these gains are represented by Rabat’s attempt to obtain recognition from some countries of the alleged sovereignty of the Moroccan regime over the occupied Saharan territories, while the consideration related to obtaining energy remains secondary for the Moroccan regime.
The same reports state that this project, which Rabat has been promoting for years, but few trust it due to problems of financing, security, regional instability or environmental impact, noting that the illusion of the Moroccan pipeline extends over a distance of seven thousand kilometers, starting from Nigeria and passing through the Western Sahara, a territory awaiting decolonization.
The same source says that it was officially presented by the two countries in 2016. It extends 7,000 kilometers from the Atlantic coast and its construction cost will exceed 25 billion dollars. Its aim will be to transport natural gas from Nigeria – which has the ninth largest gas reserves in the world – to Morocco and 13 countries in West Africa and Europe.
The report adds that the gas pipeline will start in Lagos (Nigeria), then Cotonou (Benin), Lomé (Togo), Tema and Takoradi (Ghana). Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Monrovia (Liberia), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Conakry (Guinea), Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Banjul (Gambia), Dakar (Senegal) and Nouakchott (Mauritania) will be added to the already operational section. ) and Tangier (Morocco), with the possibility of extending to Europe via a terminal in Cadiz.
The newspaper confirms that the gas pipeline project raises doubts among experts and is “complex due to technical and geopolitical issues”, noting that “for the infrastructure to be feasible, several aspects must come together, but the most important is: political stability in the countries concerned, and in this case it is “very complicated”, because the route through which it passes is experiencing chronic instability, as is the case in the Niger Delta.
There is also the economic dimension, and the newspaper asks: Who will be in charge of the infrastructure? Let us assume that the European Investment Bank will be responsible to the World Bank for financing the aforementioned infrastructure. This brings us to the question of who will ultimately take over, and how much will each of the new countries have to deal with, and what infrastructure will have to go through them
The newspaper quotes Chigozi Nweke-Eze, an energy expert and head of Integrated Africa Power, as saying that it could be operational in 2046, but given the challenges of its construction, it could take between 25 and 50 years to be operational, and speaks of the difficulties of financing, given the inability of Morocco and Nigeria to provide the necessary liquidity due to their limited financial capacity.