Nigeria-Morocco natural gas pipeline awards contract to ILF, DORIS JV

Morocco’s Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (ONHYM) and Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) are progressing work for the more than 6,000-km Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) with the award of project management consultancy (PMC) services for front-end engineering and design (FEED Phase II) to ILF Consulting Engineers and joint venture partner DORIS Engineering.

The gas pipeline is expected to cross land and waters of 16 countries along the Atlantic coast to bring Nigerian gas to North Africa and extend to Spain for the European market. The pipeline also is expected to provide a new avenue for countries along the route to export/import gas to/from their neighboring countries and Europe, the service providers said in a release July 6.

PMC services provided by ILF and DORIS cover the onshore and offshore pipeline and compressor station engineering, the engineering surveys, the environmental and social impact assessment and land acquisition studies, plus the project implementation framework. The project explores the potential to use renewable energy resources to power the pipeline and reduce the project’s carbon footprint, the service providers said.

When completed, the gas pipeline will be the longest offshore pipeline in the world and the second longest pipeline overall, the service providers continued. It has a planned diameter of 48-in. offshore and 56-in. onshore, with a planned throughput of 30 billion cu m/year.

Nigeria, an OPEC member, has the largest gas reserves in Africa and the seventh largest in the world.