Nigeria and Morocco renewed their commitment on Sunday to building a gas pipeline that will take an onshore and offshore route and a fertilisers plant, the royal palace in Rabat said.
The renewed commitment came during a phone call between Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, the palace said. The two countries agreed to the pipeline in December 2016 and launched feasibility studies.
The pipeline will be 5,660 km (3,517 miles) long, the two countries said in June 2018, adding that construction will be in phases covering 25 years.
The two leaders also agreed to speed up efforts to launch a fertilizers factory in Nigeria by Morocco’s OCP Group, the world’s biggest phosphates exporter.
The plant will produce 750,000 tonnes of ammonia and 1 million tonnes of fertilizers and is expected to be operational by 2024, OCP officials told Reuters in July.
Like many other Moroccan firms, including banks, insurers and real estate companies, OCP has been expanding its investments in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, boosting the kingdom’s economic clout.
Few years back, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) endorsed the Moroccan-Nigerian off-shore on-shore gas pipeline that will benefit 13 African countries instead of the Algerian ink on paper proposal of a tans-Saharan pipeline.
A meeting was held in Burkina Faso in the capital Ouagadougou by the ECOWAS’ energy ministers in a move that sends a clear message of support for the Nigeria-Morocco pipeline that aims at fostering regional integration and strengthening energy security of West African states.
The pipeline will benefit 13 West African nations compared to the Algerian rusty promise of a transaharian pipeline that crosses only Niger and has never been subject to any feasibility study.
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