Europe's strategic interest in completing the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline

This Policy Brief addresses the question of Europe's interest in the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project. The paper advances six arguments to support this interest and its relevance. 1) The project effectively diversifies European gas resources and provide greater scope for action. 2) Building the pipeline helps create a new generation of measures to curb the asymmetric risks Europe faces. 3) The project mitigates the risk of replacing European dependence on Russian gas with another dependence on unconventional energy sources with hazardous climatic consequences. 4) It also prevents the emergence of a strong European dependence on Algerian gas. 5) It enables Europe to rebalance its strategic direction from an unproductive horizontal model and towards a vertical model that leverages its influence. 6) Finally, the project stimulates West African integration, which in turn would constitute a vast and valuable consumer market for European economies.