Rabat – Thanks to its megaprojects finalized and underway, Morocco is becoming a key player in Africa’s ever-changing economic and geopolitical landscape.
In the ever strategic and critical energy sector, Morocco is working hard to enter the liquefied gas and other renewable energy markets in order to achieve self-sufficiency.
The country is making huge investments, with an overall budget in excess of $50 billion to invest in massive projects such as the Morocco-UK Xlinks electricity project, the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, and a second Al Boraq (high-speed train) project to link Casablanca and Agadir. With their positive targets and defined objectives, these projects are poised to make the Moroccan economy a tough competitor for industrialized countries and a model for developing countries.
Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project Among the largest sustainable development projects in Morocco is the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project. According to Xlinks, a British green energy company and developer of the project, the Morocco-UK project will be a new power generation facility that will be powered entirely by solar and wind energy, as well as a battery storage facility.
With an overall budget of $21.9 billion, Xlinks plans to build a 7 GW solar farm, in addition to a 3.5 GW wind farm and a 20 GWh/5 GW storage battery.
Located in the renewable-energy-rich Guelmim Oued Noun region of Morocco, the project will cover around 1,500 square kilometers and will be linked to Great Britain solely via 3,800 kilometers of undersea cable.
For the first phase of the Morocco-UK power project, Xlinks will produce four 3,800 kilometer submarine cables, the first of which is scheduled to be operational in early 2027.
In the first sequence, which will run from 2025 to 2027, the project developer will connect Moroccan solar power to Alverdiscott in North Devon.
Once completed, the maritime cable – the longest of its kind in the world, consisting of two 1.8 GW HVDC submarine cables – will be capable of transporting 10.5 gigawatts (GW) of green energy from this wind and solar farm in Morocco.
The cables will shuttle in shallow waters along the Moroccan coast to the UK, passing through the territorial waters of Spain, Portugal and France.
Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline In addition to the trans-Saharan gas pipeline, Morocco and Nigeria are in the process of developing a larger and more important green energy project – the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline – with the aim of expanding their South-South cooperation.
The Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project was proposed in December 2016 following the signing of an agreement between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Morocco’s Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (ONHYM). The Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) is a new regional onshore and offshore pipeline designed to transport Nigeria’s natural gas resources to 13 countries in West and North Africa.
It will be an extension of the existing West African gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Benin, Togo and Ghana. This massive project – which will be an extension of the existing West African gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Benin, Togo and Ghana – aims to connect Nigerian gas to all the coastal countries of West Africa, terminating at Tangiers in Morocco and Cadiz in Spain.
The 5,660-kilometer pipeline will start in Nigeria and cross Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Senegal and Mauritania before ending in Tangiers, Morocco, with a possible extension to Europe via Spain.
The project is expected to cost $25 billion and will be completed in phases over 25 years. This landmark initiative is in line with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s “Decade of Gas Master Plan”, unveiled in 2020, which aims to increase Nigeria’s gas production and exports.
It’s also part of King Mohammed VI’s commitment to South-South cooperation, aimed at creating a competitive regional electricity market that will benefit the people, governments and economies of West Africa. Al Boraq Between Casablanca and Agadir In keeping with Morocco’s succession of huge projects, the Al Boraq high-speed train is another notable project involving the structuring development of a multimodal transport system.
Following the success of the high-speed line between Casablanca and Tangiers – Africa’s first high-speed rail system – Morocco is developing a second high-speed line linking Casablanca to Agadir. After the Office national des chemins de fer marocains (ONCF) examined a feasibility study for the construction of a high-speed line between Casablanca and Agadir via Marrakech, the high-speed sector project was launched to give a significant boost to King Mohammed VI’s vision of economic dynamism.
According to a 2013 report by the Ministry of Equipment, Transport and Logistics, Morocco has drawn up a management plan to equip the country with a 1,500-kilometer high-speed rail network by 2035. The aim of the project is to link Tangier to Agadir in less than four hours via Rabat – Casablanca, Marrakech and Essaouira (Atlantic line), and Casablanca to Oujda in less than three hours via Meknes and Fez (Maghreb line).
This Boraq high-speed train line from Casablanca to Agadir would cost up to 75 billion MAD ($7.5 billion), with ONCF investing 7.7 billion MAD ($848 million) between 2022 and 2024 to modernize and rebuild the country’s rail infrastructure.
Can Morocco bring these projects to fruition? Morocco’s potential to stimulate its economy may be quite remarkable in the projects and initiatives it is currently working on. But can Morocco really win this bet? Can it finance all these major projects at once? Looking at the massive projects carried out in Morocco over the last ten years, the country is beginning to attract international attention as a model, being a nation with great potential and qualifications.
According to statistics compiled in 2021 by Global Data, an international data analysis and consulting company, Morocco’s recent gas projects, in particular Tendrara and Anchois, bring the country “closer to unlocking [ses] domestic gas wealth”.
While Tendrara can anticipate “productive growth” by mid-2022, and Anchois “will be by far the largest gas development undertaken in Morocco to date”, GlobalData analyst Santiago Varela says that financing will be the main challenge for both projects.
“While the economics of the Tendrara and Anchois projects look tempting, it’s not yet clear whether the current operators will be able to finalize the financing needed to develop the fields.
Securing capital is the last hurdle on the road to unlocking the country’s gas resources,” said Varela. For her, “Morocco has failed to develop its major gas discoveries to date, mainly due to the fact that oil has been the preferred resource over gas”.
Yet, “with the emphasis on gas, an attractive fiscal framework and strong domestic demand”, Varela noted, “international operators are making great efforts to develop the country’s resources”.
The Xlinks Morocco-UK energy project, the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline and Al Boraq between Casablanca and Agadir are all major projects that will boost Morocco’s economy and its status as a key player in Africa, but the only problem remains – as with previous big-budget projects.
