The government of Morocco has announced to have received a bid for the construction and operation of a proposed Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) off the Atlantic coast.
Following the call for expressions of interest published late last month by the Department of Energy and Mines Fuel Department, Predator Oil & Gas Holdings PLC, a Jersey-based oil and gas exploration company, submitted the bid.
The initial scope of the Morocco FSRU project is for an annual requirement of 1.1 billion cubic metres by 2025, rising to 1.7 billion cubic metres in 2030, and to 3 billion cubic metres in 2040. Currently, the North African country has a demand of just 1 billion cubic meters per year that it meets owing to gas it sources in Algeria as part of its Algerian gas transit agreement to Spain.
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Long-term project
The bid is seen by the company as a long-term project which will not compete with any of its short or medium-term projects in the fields of exploration and extraction. The company is already present in Morocco as it is the operator of Guercif Petroleum Agreement onshore northern Morocco. Guercif is located adjacent to the Maghreb gas pipeline, which enables the support of multiple development scenarios.
The FSRU project is potentially a complementary addition to Predator’s business development strategy for Morocco, the company states. The plan is to increase both materiality and the potential for future gas exports to Europe once the domestic Moroccan gas market reaches capacity. Predator also plans to develop a 2.6 billion cubic metres per year FSRU terminal in Ireland.
“This is somewhat a potential continuation of the company’s commercial development strategy in Morocco, which aims to increase future gas exports to Europe, once the Moroccan domestic gas market has reached its full potential,” said the company
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