Spain Delays Gas Shipments to Morocco Amid Regional Tensions

"Spain has not yet sent gas to Morocco. Officially, there is no going back, but the authorization, announced last week as imminent, has still not been given," reports La Vanguardia, specifying that "the technical device and administrative formalities" are finalized. Morocco must provide proof of the purchase of gas (purchase invoices) on the international market in order to avoid any suspicion on Spain that Algeria has already threatened to cut off if it supplied its gas to Morocco.

To read: Algeria Warns Spain: Gas Contracts at Risk if Morocco Receives Algerian Supply

The Spanish Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, assured her Algerian counterpart in Energy, Mohamed Akrab, that not a single molecule of Algerian gas would go to Morocco, the role of Spain in this agreement being to make available to the kingdom its regasification plants to transform the liquefied natural gas acquired on the international market before transporting it via the Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline (GME) in the reverse direction.

To read: Spain’s Gas Pipeline Reversal for Morocco Exposes Algerian Diplomatic Tensions

If Spain ultimately opens the GME to transport gas to Morocco, it could find itself without the amount of gas (21%) that Algeria provides it, which, for its part, fears that the GME may one day extend to the Sahara to capture gas from Nigeria, and possibly Mauritania and Senegal.