Rabat – Russia has expressed interest in investing in the Morocco-Nigeria gas pipeline (NMGP) that aims to supply Europe and West Africa with natural gas.
Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, said on Monday that many countries and organizations want to invest in the trans-African pipeline with Morocco and Nigeria remaining the project’s main investors.
“The Russians were with me in the office last week, they are very desirous to invest in this project and there’re lots of other people who are also desirous to invest in the project,” Sylva said in remarks made at Nigeria’s State House.
Commenting on the funding progress, Sylva noted that the selection of partners remains a work in progress.
The pipeline’s feasibility study was estimated to cost $90.1 million. Last week, the OPEC Fund agreed to partially fund the study with a budget of $14.3 million.
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Launched in 2017, the joint project is a 7,0000-kilometer pipeline that traverses the territorial waters of 13 countries.
In a phone call with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in February of this year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari noted that his country is working on implementing the project as soon as possible.
The acceleration of the pipeline’s progress comes at a time when Europe is facing a severe energy crisis caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine and the Russian threat to cut gas and oil supply to Europe. Russia’s months-long threat has since become a reality in Poland and Bulgaria.
In late March, Sylva noted that Nigeria can be a reliable supplier of natural gas to Europe to solve “the energy problem,” arguing: “It is only when investment in these areas is increased that Nigeria can meet that obligation.”
However, questions about the ability of African countries to offset Russian supply remain at the center of discussion about Europe’s ongoing energy crisis and thus the stability of the global energy prices.
