1st regasification platform coming soon

Morocco has drawn up a plan to import LNG directly from Spain. The plan includes the construction of three long-term regasification platforms. And Leïla Benali, Minister for Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, and her team, who have scaled back their ambitions, are apparently in a hurry.

After all, two of these regasification platforms are due to be completed by 2027. The first of these, the only one on the Mediterranean coast, will be built at the port of Nador West Med. To this end, a strategic memorandum of understanding was signed on March 26 between four ministries (Interior, Economy and Finance, Equipment and Water and Energy Transition & Sustainable Development) and five public bodies and state-owned enterprises (ANP, ONEE, ONHYM, Nador West Med and ADM). The aim is to strengthen public authority coordination with a view to accelerating implementation of the sustainable gas infrastructure development program. A program which, it should be recalled, had difficulty getting off the ground in 2021, with an unsuccessful call for tenders. This led to the ANP’s desire to equip itself with the same type of infrastructure at the port of Mohammedia in 2022.

This first Nador West Med platform will be equipped with a gas pipeline connected to the GME ( Maghreb – Europe gas pipeline ) and will be used primarily to supply ONEE’s combined-cycle gas power plants, notably those at Aïn Béni Mathar and Tahaddart, to produce electricity. This platform will be followed, in the short term, by another regasification platform to be erected on the Atlantic coast, at either Jorf Lasfar or Mohammedia. «Studies will be launched shortly to determine which of these two ports will ultimately be chosen.

And servicing the industrial basins will be a determining factor in this choice «, he explained. Indeed, the aim is to meet the needs of many industrialists who wish to replace fuel oil with natural gas, and to help develop new activities such as glass and steel production. The third and final platform will be built at the port of Dakhla Atlantique by 2030 and will be connected to the Mauritanian and Senegalese networks, as well as to the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline.

To ensure the rapid deployment of all these LNG entry points in Morocco, the government has opted for a PPP approach, in which the bulk of the investments will be made by the national and international private sector. The tender for the first regasification platform at Nador West Med will be launched shortly.

Aziz DIOUF