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Join on Telegram Rabat – Spanish news agency EFE has expressed concerns regarding the fate of the Maghreb Europe Gas Pipeline amidst the severing of diplomatic ties between Algeria and Morocco.
Spain receives Algerian gas from the pipeline passing through Morocco.
According to data from Europe Maghreb Pipeline Limited (EMPL), over 30% of the natural gas consumed in Spain is transported from Algeria through Morocco.
With Algeria’s decision to cut ties with Morocco, however, Spanish officials and media have repeatedly expressed concerns over the repercussions of the Algerian-Moroccan fallout on the continuity of the Europe Maghreb Pipeline project.
According to Algerian sources cited in EFE’s latest report about the future of the Algeria-Morocco-Spain pipeline project, Algeria might decide not to extend the pipeline’s contract because of diplomatic tensions with Morocco.
The tripartite gas pipeline’ contract expires in October, and the prevailing mood in Algiers has been to shrug off and dismiss anything that includes Morocco, EFE appeared to suggest. The potential decision to cut the gas pipeline might cost the countries to “different degrees,” warned the Spanish newspaper.
Spanish media’s alarming reports about the Europe Maghreb Pipeline’s renewal prospects come mere days after Spain’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares vowed that tension between Morocco and Algeria will not affect the pipeline’s future.
Following discussions with Spain’s “Moroccan and Algerian friends,” the Spanish FM told the media that both countries were committed to the pipeline project and would not terminate its contract in spite of their political disagreements.
Prior to Algeria’s decision to cut ties with Morocco, Rabat had expressed its readiness to negotiate the extension of the pipeline.
In August, the General Director of Morocco’s National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM), Amina Benkhadra, emphasized Rabat’s commitment to the agreement despite some lingering issues with its Algerian and Spanish neighbors.
“It is our will, as we expressed it verbally and publicly in private discussions, always with the same clarity, and the same consistency,” Benkhadra said.
Algeria and Morocco have been experiencing tension for years, with Morocco’s main grievance against its eastern neighbor being the Algerian regime’s logistical and financial support for the Polisario Front, an armed s claiming an independent state in Morocco’s southern provinces.
In recent weeks, tensions between the two neighbors reached a new low when Algeria accused its western neighbor, without providing corroborating details or evidence, of being in collusion with Israel and Kabyle self-determination activists to undermine Algeria.
“The incessant hostile acts carried out by Morocco against Algeria have necessitated the review of relations between the two countries,” Algeria’s presidency said in a statement days before Algiers announced the severing of ties with Rabat.
In response, Morocco strongly rejected both Algeria’s “unilateral and unjustified” decision to sever ties and its “fallacious” accusations. Rabat added, however, that it was committed to preserving the friendship and social bonds between the Algerian and Moroccan peoples despite political divergences.
