Massive Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project may transport green hydrogen
Morocco is studying transporting green hydrogen via the anticipated Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project (NMGP), said Amina Benkhadra, Director General of the Moroccan National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM), on Wednesday.
Not just a “Pipeline” Project
The multi-billion-dollar pan-African project is set to connect 11 African countries along the African coast on its way to Morocco and then be connected to the energy system of Spain or Italy to compensate Russia’s cut of gas supplies to the EU last year. It is expected to deliver about four billion cubic feet of gas daily when fully operational.
In addition to Nigeria and Morocco, the 11 participating African countries in the project are Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania.
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Power-to-X Summit, Benkhadra further told Bloomberg Asharq that the NMGP will include two pipes, the first is for the natural gas and the second for green hydrogen.
The project was proposed in a December 2016 agreement between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the ONHYM.
It is set to help strengthen the region’s electricity production and generation capacity, stimulate industrial and agricultural development, and contribute to the energy transition by using a source of energy that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.
NMGP is expected to link together a total area of about 11 million square kilometres out of the 30 million that make up all of Africa, a massive region in which about 527 million people of the continent’s 1.426 billion people live.
