The Morocco-Spain: Gas Pipeline operational in reverse flow
Spain has just confirmed the delivery to Morocco of natural gas purchased on international markets. Indeed, since Tuesday, June 28, the Northern neighbor has been transporting gas to the Kingdom, through the Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline (GME). It was the Spanish media that announced the reactivation of the pipeline. On the Moroccan side, officially no information has yet been leaked out concerning this subject.
“Based on business relations and good neighborliness, last Tuesday took place the first shipment by the Maghreb Gas Pipeline of LNG (liquefied natural gas) previously acquired by Morocco on international markets and landed in a Spanish regasification plant”, the AFP agency quotes sources at the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition. According to the Spanish general information newspaper La Vanguardia: the Moroccan facilities are ready.
“The compressor stations have been adapted. This technical work was done calmly before Morocco and Spain announced their reconciliation last March”, reads the paper, adding that “the shipment of gas from Spain to Morocco is part of a package of measures for the resumption of relations between the two countries”. Given this decision, Morocco will now be able to use the Maghreb gas pipeline in the opposite direction, with which the two electricity production plants which were paralyzed will restart, underlines the Spanish press, noting that the transfer of this gas requires a “minor” technical adaptation.
According to the Catalan daily published in Barcelona (El Periódico), “there are already gas flows to Morocco via Tarifa, with which the gas pipeline opens in the opposite direction for the first time”. The same Spanish media specifies that “the interconnection will operate according to the technical rules of the European Union, like those already existing linking Spain to Portugal and France”. In concrete terms, the principle consists of buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the international market. Then, the gas is transported to regasification plants in Spain in accordance with the agreement entered into between the two governments after the closure in November 2021 by Algeria of the gas pipeline which supplied the Iberian Peninsula via Morocco. Thus, an LNG carrier bought by Morocco carried out its first unloading in one of the Spanish regasification plants, indicates the Spanish website El Periódico. This same gas cargo was sent, in the afternoon of Monday, through the GME gas pipeline to Morocco, confirms the Spanish outlet. This is “a small quantity of 5,900 Nm3/h, which was exported, i.e. 55 MWH”, according to data from the Enagás company in charge of this operation. It should be noted that at the end of last April, Algiers had threatened Madrid “to break the contract for the supply of natural gas if part of it reached Morocco” with whom Algeria broke off its diplomatic relations unilaterally. The Spanish executive then assured Algiers that Morocco would only receive the LNG that it regasifies in Spain. It is therefore in no way a question of gas from Algeria. Moreover, “a certification process guarantees that this gas (shipped from Spain to Morocco) is not of Algerian origin” say the Spanish institutions. In the same vein , the manager of the Spanish gas network (Enagás) is tasked with “verifying the origin of the LNG tanker transporting the ga” purchased by Morocco. After each unloading, the manager issues a certificate… specifies the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition.
Amin RBOUB
