Morocco Unveils Ambitious Plan for Energy Independence with Pipelines and Green Hydrogen

Five Moroccan ministries, under the leadership of the Ministry of Energy Transition, signed on March 26 a program aimed at building three regasification plants, storage tanks and gas pipelines, reports El Confidencial. The first regasification plant will be built in Nador West Med. The second, in Mohammedia, north of Casablanca, and the third, in Dakhla, in the southern Sahara. A gas pipeline is also planned to connect to the Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline from Nador West, the Spanish media specifies.

Morocco is also active in the construction of a trans-Atlantic gas pipeline with Nigeria, a 6,000 km underwater infrastructure that will cross the waters of 13 countries and allow supplying Spain with gas. In addition, Morocco will launch the exploitation of its gas fields in the coming months, that of Anchois, off Larache, and that of Tendrara, in the southeast of the kingdom. The program signed at the end of March by the five ministries plans to connect them, by means of small pipelines, to the neighboring industries, it is announced.

Morocco aims to "become a major bi-directional energy corridor between Africa, Europe and the Atlantic basin, like Turkey which has six LNG entry points and 20,000 kilometers of gas pipelines on its territory," said Leila Benani, Minister of Energy Transition, on Tuesday, specifying that "this challenge requires the construction of a flexible and agile infrastructure focused on LNG, which will also serve, in the medium and long term, for the transfer of hydrogen."

Morocco wants to achieve energy self-sufficiency thanks to renewable energies which should generate 52% of electricity by 2030. With its ambitious projects like the Noor Ouarzazate solar power plant and the Tarfaya wind farm, the kingdom has affirmed its commitment to invest in this sector. A renewed commitment in mid-March with the decree of the Head of the Moroccan Government, Aziz Akhannouch, offering 300,000 hectares of land to investors to produce green hydrogen.