Morocco enabled counter oil drilling Lanzarote and FuerteventuraIn its uninterrupted search for hydrocarbons on the seafloor rubbing against the confines of Canary waters. And he does this at the beginning of the negotiations between Spain and the Alaouite kingdom, for the first time on paper to determine the boundary of the territorial sea between the two countries.
Amina Benkhadra, executive director of the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mining (Onhym), appeared before the Rabat-based House of Representatives Committee on Infrastructure, Energy, Mining and Environment last Wednesday. Developments in the gas sector in the Alevi kingdom. In its report, Italian multinational ENI, which has chaired the consortium of Qatar Petroleum International Upstream and Moroccan state-owned Onhym since 2018, confirmed that it will drill two wells in the Tarfaya Offshore region, in the far west of the enclave. Shalow is a flock of twelve grids that they run the work on.
The area where Morocco will conduct two drillings is located opposite Lanzarote and Fuerteventura and on the coast between Agadir and Western Sahara, in the block known as the Tarfaya Offshore Shallow.
When it became known in November last year that the National Hydrocarbon and Mining Department of Morocco had given permission to explore the Atlantic coast superficially in the open seas in the Tarfaya Offshore Shallow region between the Agadir region and Western Sahara, Broad social and institutional rejection on the islandsAs always, it was desired to drill in the waters close to the Canary Islands, where the maritime border was not limited.
Yes repsol researched the same funds seven years ago and natural gas, the volume found was insufficient to cover one marketing phase. These surveys found less than 100 kilometers of opposition to Tarfaya across the entire Archipelago, particularly in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, the islands closest to the drill.
Approval of the holes in Tarfaya by the director general of the National Hydrocarbon Office, Tense moment in the islands, especially after the president Pedro Sanchez He guided Spain’s international policy. and support Morocco’s autonomy plan Western sahra, This caused great unrest in the Archipelago and criticism among the partners of the four-party government. Socialist president Ángel Víctor Torres had to get through the situation with his allies and the entire parliamentary arch, especially from Nueva Canarias and Podemos.
Spanish-Moroccan Commission
After this open support of Spain for the autonomy plan of the Sahara, Spanish-Moroccan commission delimitation of territorial watersAnother discussion in the Islands is to create a median between Moroccan and Canarian waters.
Morocco was unilaterally prosecuted in an appropriate part of the country through domestic law two years ago. canary waters and the riches hidden in its soil. It expanded its exclusive economic zone by 200 miles and the continental shelf by 350 miles, which meant additionally allocating Western Sahara waters. The Canary Islands opposed it, and Spain paralyzed him. But now begins a difficult negotiation where the discovery of hydrocarbons, or tellurium, cobalt, and rare earth elements, among other minerals, which are almost never used by the Alaouite country, are of great importance for the green technology of the future, according to research. in the sea mountains.
Torres has stated several times that the government will react immediately if prospecting in Morocco affects the Canary Islands. Regarding the technical committee on the delimitation of maritime areas on the Atlantic front, he recalls a representative from the Canary Islands and hopes that in this way the “unilateral decisions” of Morocco will be definitively eliminated. But the opposition, like CC, It’s not clear at all that Sánchez is uncompromising and Morocco can drill.with what this will mean for tourism and the surrounding Islands.
Twelve blocks of the Tarfaya Offshore Shallow are located opposite the Moroccan cities of Sidi Ifni, Tan Tan and Tarfaya. Survey permits span 23,900 square kilometers from zero to 1,000 meters deep. This is the southern region of the Spanish protectorate. In fact, it was one of the bases from which the Green March left in 1975 for the then Spanish Sahara territory.
Since 2000, there has been intense activity in the hydrocarbon exploration of Morocco and other countries. 67 through holes by eleven companies in the country to extract natural gas, According to the report presented by Amina Benkhadra, there are 40 of these energy sources in large quantity. It shows that at the level of the Atlantic coast, from Agadir to Tarfaya, seven wells were drilled, three of which were in shallow waters. Two of these wells confirmed the presence of oil off Tarfaya and Sidi Ifni, while four other wells in the same offshore region highlighted important oil and gas indices.