Posted by Tyler Durden, Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) formally endorsed the offshore Nigerian-Moroccan Pipeline in late July. Construction on this $25 billion megaproject is expected to begin in 2028 and stretch over 4,000 kilometers along the West African coast for supplying the EU with 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year. Nigeria’s enhanced importance for the EU will place this official BRICS partner more firmly under Western influence and the same goes for the ECOWAS bloc that it leads.

While the 30 bcm is only around one-fifth of what Russia used to supply to the EU during the heyday of their energy trade, it nevertheless helps fuel the bloc’s economy, and it’ll also presumably be cheaper than the LNG that it began to import at scale from the US since sanctioning Russia back in 2022. Closer EU-Nigerian ties will complement the increasingly close US-Nigerian ones under Trump 2.0, which could ultimately lead to them empowering Nigeria to become their regional enforcer by proxy.

Although it has yet to go through with the putative anti-terrorist invasion of Mali that its Defense Minister intimated in early May, which would likely be pursued for regime change purposes if it ever comes to pass, Nigeria can still play this role in the future with Western backing. If the Sahelian Alliance of which Mali is a part survives the present Syrian-like Hybrid War onslaught, then a Western-backed Nigerian war with the bloc can’t be ruled out, one in which other ECOWAS states might also participate.

BBC cited energy expert and former Nigerian government advisor Charles Majomi as assessing that “[the Nigerian-Moroccan Pipeline] signals a change from current models where gas is typically extracted from African nations, refined and processed abroad then shipped back to African nations at three or four times the price”. It would of course be a positive development for the other ECOWAS states to receive gas at a much cheaper price, but the West never does anything without some benefit to itself in mind.