The Diplomat
Morocco is preparing to sign this week its first contract for the purchase of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which will later be regasified in Spain in compliance with the agreement between Madrid and Rabat to mitigate Algeria’s decision to close the gas pipeline that supplied the Iberian Peninsula through Moroccan territory.
As explained this past Monday by the Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Leila Benali, in Parliament, Morocco – which has managed to enter the international LNG market for the first time in its history – has received dozens of offers that have been examined by an ad hoc committee, and will sign a first purchase contract throughout this week, according to the state news agency MAP.
At the end of last April, Algeria’s energy minister warned the government of Pedro Sánchez that his country would break the gas supply contract with Spain in the event that part of the natural gas sent to our country was diverted to some “other destination”, in clear reference to Morocco. The Algerian reaction came after the commitment adopted by Madrid last February to help Rabat to regasify liquefied natural gas in existing plants in Spain and send it back to Moroccan territory through the Maghreb Europe Gas Pipeline (GME), through which Algeria supplied the peninsula via Morocco until last November and which was closed that same month by the Algerian authorities in the midst of the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two Maghreb countries.
Following the Algerian warning, the Third Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, assured that “the commitment with Algeria is that not a single molecule of gas arriving in Morocco can be imputed to gas coming from Algeria”. “The agreement that we are making available in commercial terms is the infrastructures for Morocco, but with the indispensable condition that it is Morocco that contracts the liquefied natural gas (…) and that the origin of this gas and the place where this gas is landed is transparent and public, so that we can be sure that the volume, the origin and the destination complies with this commitment with Algeria,” she added.
The announcement of the Moroccan minister coincides, moreover, with a serious deterioration of relations between Spain and Algeria following the decision of the government of Pedro Sanchez to recognize the validity of the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, a deterioration that has resulted in a series of reprisals by the Algerian government, such as the recall of the ambassador in Madrid for consultations, the suspension of the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborhood and Cooperation Treaty and trade relations (the European Union has warned Algeria that this measure would violate the Association Agreement, after which the Algerian mission to the EU has assured that it has never considered freezing trade or gas supplies with Spain) and the most recent decision of the Algerian Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts to prohibit tourism cooperation with Spain.
