Nigeria takes its $25bn Morocco gas pipeline to investors; and puts a second desert route on the 2027 agenda

The pitch Nigeria took to Abu Dhabi

Nigeria has taken Africa’s biggest gas gamble to market. At the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, known as ADIPEC, the chief executive of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company, Bashir Bayo Ojulari, said the company is actively inviting investors into the planned $25–26 billion pipeline that would carry Nigerian gas to Morocco, and onward to Europe. The remarks, made on 3 November and reported on 8 November, turn a project agreed a decade ago into a live financing campaign; with a second announcement attached: talks on a final investment decision for the rival Trans-Saharan pipeline are expected to open next year.

The line is the Nigeria–Morocco Gas Pipeline, also called the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline. Jointly led by NNPC and Morocco’s ONHYM, it is designed to carry up to 30 billion cubic metres of Nigerian and West African gas a year to Morocco through 13 Atlantic coastal countries, with interconnections for the landlocked states of the Sahel. The route would run 6,800 kilometres, 5,100 of them offshore, through every ECOWAS coastal country and Mauritania.

Ojulari said NNPC is already talking to potential investors, including the UAE’s ADNOC, after an agreement signed in September by the countries on the route. In an official NNPC statement he put it plainly: “All the countries involved in the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline have aligned and executed the necessary agreements.” For a project long stuck as a memorandum, that sentence is the news.

A phased build on pipes that already exist

The most important thing Ojulari said may be the least dramatic: “We’re not starting fresh.” The Atlantic pipeline is to be built in phases from the existing West African Gas Pipeline, in which NNPC owns a 24.9 percent stake. That line already runs offshore from Nigeria to Benin, Togo and Ghana; the plan is to extend it to Sierra Leone, monetise that stretch, then extend again; demonstrating performance.

The engineering groundwork is largely done: in June 2026 NNPC said front-end engineering design was complete and route reconnaissance finalised. Fifteen billion cubic metres a year of the 30 billion would go to Morocco, then on to Europe through the existing Maghreb–Europe pipeline to Spain. The gas is not in doubt: Nigeria hopes to unlock nearly 20 trillion cubic feet in deep waters under contracts with ExxonMobil, Shell and Total.

Ojulari also updated the Trans-Saharan line. Nigeria, Algeria and Niger have aligned on its funding structure. The $10–13 billion pipeline would run 4,327 kilometres from the end of Nigeria’s Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano pipeline at Kano, through Niger, to Algeria, with Sonatrach as partner alongside NNPC and Niger’s SONIDEP; nearly half of the Algerian section is existing infrastructure, and work on it began on 4 June 2026.

The money, the timetable and the queue

For all the detail on routes and volumes, the financing remains a blank. Ojulari named no committed investor and no committed sum, and gave no date for a final investment decision on the Atlantic line itself; only that Trans-Saharan talks would open next year, and that the Atlantic project should reach “a line of sight on FID sometime next year.” The financing structure and the debt the project company will raise are still to be settled.

The intergovernmental agreement is another open item: ONHYM’s Amina Benkhadra said in April it would be signed this year, with a Morocco-based NNPC–ONHYM joint venture to lead execution; but no signing has been reported. And behind both pipelines sits the question nobody in Abu Dhabi answered: if capital is scarce, which line gets built first?

Why does a pitch in Abu Dhabi matter in Rabat; and in Brussels?

For Morocco, the stakes go beyond the 15 billion cubic metres a year the kingdom would receive. A pipeline landing in Morocco and continuing to Spain through the Maghreb–Europe link would make the kingdom the southern gateway for West African gas into Europe. It fits the Atlantic strategy Rabat has been assembling in plain sight: port investment in the Southern Provinces, backed by €100 million from France’s development agency, and a diplomatic push that took Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita to Nouakchott this week as the post-MINURSO order takes shape. Energy transit would hardwire that strategy into steel.

For Nigeria, the pipeline is the way out of a paradox: some of the world’s largest gas reserves, much of it stranded offshore. Monetising the deepwater gas for export, while new domestic lines serve the home market, is the core of the reform pitch Ojulari has made since the Petroleum Industry Act.

For Europe, a 30-billion-cubic-metre corridor from West Africa would be a meaningful addition to a continent still replacing Russian gas, But buyers will note the competition: the Trans-Saharan line offers the same gas through Algeria’s existing network. The contest between the routes is, in the end, a contest for European contracts.

Can Nigeria finance two mega-pipelines at once?

The honest answer is that it probably cannot, and that is what makes the dual announcement interesting. Nigeria is advancing two pipelines to the same market, the $25–26 billion Atlantic line to Morocco and the $10–13 billion Trans-Saharan line through Algeria, together roughly $35–39 billion before overruns. The likeliest outcome is a queue, not a tie: one line reaches financial close first, and the other waits.

The Atlantic line’s case rests on momentum: its engineering is done, its route countries have signed, and the Sierra Leone extension offers a short, monetisable proof of concept before the full 6,800 kilometres are funded.

The Trans-Saharan line’s case rests on brevity and sunk cost. At 4,327 kilometres it is far shorter, nearly half of its Algerian section already exists, construction there began in June, and Sonatrach is a partner. Its weakness is geography: the route crosses Niger and the Sahel security belt. What will decide the queue is contracting: a pipeline reaches its final investment decision when buyers sign long-term offtake, and European buyers courted by both routes will wait and compare. NNPC’s promise of “a lot more announcements next year” is the commitment to watch: named investors and signed offtake would turn the Atlantic pitch into a project.

What a gas corridor does to the map around it

For the thirteen coastal states on its route, transit fees and domestic gas access would arrive together; the interconnections promised for the landlocked Sahel states are the difference between a pipe that passes through West Africa and a pipe that serves it. For Morocco, the line would complete a run of Atlantic-facing investments positioning the kingdom as the hinge between West African supply and European demand. Nigeria’s politics add their own risk premium: a Nigerian court voided the presidential nomination of Atiku Abubakar ten weeks before the vote, a reminder that the financing round is running against an unsettled political calendar.

For Algeria, the Trans-Saharan line keeps Algiers in a game it might otherwise lose. The rivalry between the two routes mirrors the wider competition between Rabat and Algiers, but both lines end in Europe, and European buyers will use the existence of two routes to press both on price. The competition may serve Europe better than either seller, and the two pipelines, pitched as alternatives, may end up disciplining each other’s terms.

There is a longer shadow, too. A 30-billion-cubic-metre fossil corridor whose first gas is pencilled in for 2031 lands in a Europe that plans to cut gas demand sharply over the following decade, and the stranded-asset question will follow the project to every financing meeting: what is a 25-year pipeline worth if its best customers are decarbonising? The answer its backers will give is energy security; that Europe pays a premium for supply it controls.

What has to go right before the first gas flows?

The next twelve months will show whether the Abu Dhabi pitch becomes a project. Three markers matter most. First, the financing: named investors, committed sums and a published structure for the NNPC–ONHYM project company. Second, the intergovernmental agreement, which ONHYM said would be signed this year. Third, the Sierra Leone extension; the short first step Ojulari offered as proof the phased build works.

Alongside those, watch the Trans-Saharan timetable: discussions on its final investment decision are due to open in 2027, and the order in which the two lines approach their decisions will reveal which route the market favours. Watch the parallel signals from Abuja, the 40-block licensing round opening on 20 November, and any timetable for NNPC’s partial listing. And watch the buyers: the first long-term offtake agreement signed for Atlantic gas will be the moment the pitch stops being a pitch. Until then, the $25 billion pipeline to Morocco is fully engineered, fully agreed and fully unfunded, and the money is the story now.