Total’s announcement suggests western energy companies are also starting to look seriously at the 20-30bn cum/yr gas pipeline in spite of the huge technical and commercial challenges of transporting gas from Nigeria’s Niger Delta to export terminals on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. Guy Maurice, managing director of Total Exploration and Production in Nigeria, told an oil and gas conference in Abuja, the capital, that the pipeline would be a long-term strategic investment for Nigeria. “Total is ready to be involved in this project,” Mr Maurice said.
Gazprom signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp in September last year to co-operate on gas exploration, production, and transportation. The Russian company said it would start work in Nigeria by investing at least $2.5bn to develop government plans to build a network of pipelines and processing plants to harness gas for local use. “We’re continuing saying that though we are very interested in the Trans-Saharan pipeline, Trans-Saharan starts after the Nigerian gas grid is completed,” Vladimir Ilyanin, managing director of Gazprom’s subsidiary in Nigeria, told the conference. Sonatrach, Algeria’s state oil company, is also interested in working on the pipeline.