Medgaz is a submarine

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

between

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

and

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History

The idea of building a direct gas pipeline between Algeria and Europe arose in the 1970s. However, the technical limitations at that time prevented the construction and operation of an ultra deepwater gas pipeline. The preparation of Medgaz project started in 2001 by founding Medgaz pipeline company (''Sociedad para el Estudio y Promoción del Gasoducto Argelia-Europa, vía España S.A.''). The feasibility study carried out in 2002–2003. The construction started on 7 March 2008 in

Almería Almería (, , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, located in Andalusia. It is the capital of the province of the same name. It lies on southeastern Iberia on the Mediterranean Sea. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III founded the city in 955. The city gr ...

. Work in laying the subsea stretch was finished in December 2008. The pipeline was officially inaugurated on 1 March 2011.

Route

The pipeline begins from the

Hassi R'mel Hassi R'Mel ( ar, حاسي الرمل, Berber language: Ḥasi Eṛṛmel) is a town in Algeria located near the 18th largest gas field worldwide. Hassi R'Mel is located in Laghouat Province northwest of Ghardaïa. It is the capital of Hassi R'M ...

field in Algeria and the first section runs to the port of

Beni Saf is a Japanese R&B singer, who debuted in 2004 under the Avex Trax label. In 2008, Arashiro left Avex Trax and transferred to Universal Music Japan where she started to perform as simply Beni (stylized as BENI). She was initially best known fo ...

. The offshore section begins from Beni Saf and the landfall site is at the Perdigal Beach in the coast of Almería, Spain. It will be hooked up to the existing Almería-Albacete gas pipeline.

Technical description

The length of Algerian onshore section is and the offshore section is . The initial capacity of the onshore and offshore pipeline will be 8 billion cubic meter (bcm) of natural gas annually. It would be possible to increase the capacity of the first pipeline, and also the option to lay a second same diameter pipeline with minimal extra construction is foreseen. Total estimated costs of project are €900 million, including €630 million for the offshore section. The Algerian onshore section of the pipeline is to be constructed by UTE Initec – Spie Capag and the offshore section is to be constructed by

Saipem Saipem S.p.A. (Società Anonima Italiana Perforazioni E Montaggi lit. ''Drilling and Assembly Italian Public Limited Company'') is an Italian multinational oilfield services company and one of the largest in the world. Until 2016 it was a subsid ...

. The offshore section of the pipeline was laid by

Castoro Sei The ''Castoro Sei'' (Italian for ''Beaver Six'') is a column stabilized semi-submersible pipelay vessel. She has an overall length of , a width of and an operating draught of . The ''Castoro Sei'' is equipped with 2 rotating gantry cranes ...

Saipem 7000 The ''Saipem 7000'' is the world's third largest semi-submersible crane vessel, after the and the . It is owned by the oil and gas industry contractor Saipem S.p.A. Construction The vessel was designed by Gusto Engineering during 1984. The ve ...

and Crawler

pipe-laying ship A pipelaying ship is a maritime vessel used in the construction of subsea infrastructure. It serves to connect oil production platforms with refineries on shore. To accomplish this goal a typical pipelaying vessel carries a heavy lift crane, used ...

s. Steel pipes are delivered by

Nippon Steel was formed in 2012 by the merger of the old Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal. was established in 1970 by the merger of Fuji Iron & Steel and Yawata Iron & Steel. Nippon Steel is the world's third largest steel producer by volume as of 2019. ...

, and three compressor trains were supplied by Dresser-Rand. Lloyd's Register would provide pipeline inspection and certification services, including vendor works inspection for the pipeline and equipment and certification for the onshore and offshore pipe lay and the construction of the compressor station. The initial capacity of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year was expanded to 10.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, for an estimated cost of €68 million. The expansion became operational in 2021.

Project company

The head of the Medgaz company is Pedro Miró Roig. The shareholders of Medgaz consortium: *

Sonatrach Sonatrach ( ar, سوناطراك; french: Société Nationale pour la Recherche, la Production, le Transport, la Transformation, et la Commercialisation des Hydrocarbures) is the national state-owned oil company of Algeria. Founded in 1963, it is ...

(Algeria) – 51% *

Naturgy Naturgy Energy Group S.A''.'', formerly ''Gas Natural Fenosa'' (), is a Spanish multinational natural gas and electrical energy utilities company, which operates primarily in Spain. The company's administrative headquarters are in Barcelona, while ...

(Spain) – 49% In 2006, BP and

Total Total may refer to: Mathematics * Total, the summation of a set of numbers * Total order, a partial order without incomparable pairs * Total relation, which may also mean ** connected relation (a binary relation in which any two elements are comp ...

withdrew from the project.

References

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External links