Offshore gas production could help to meet Mauritania's power demand by 2030 while also supporting mining activity, particularly of iron ore, energy minister Mohammed Ould Khaled told the Invest in African Energy forum today.
BP last month loaded the first LNG shipment from its 2.7mn t/yr Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) joint venture in Mauritanian and Senegalese waters.
GTA is export-oriented, but Mauritania could still tap the project for power, Khaled said, although he added that infrastructure would need to be built to facilitate this. A tender to build a power plant fired by GTA gas will be launched in the next couple of weeks, he said.
Mauritania wants to become a regional power hub within 20 years, Khaled said, and hopes to see construction of a power link "to the north" — in the direction of Western Sahara/Morocco. The Mauritanian power grid is already connected to Senegal and Mali, he said.
Future power generation projects will be funded by the private sector and incentivised through tax breaks, Khaled said, with 550MW set to become available to the domestic market through private-sector projects over the next couple of years.
Mauritania is also looking for partners to develop the 50 trillion-60 trillion ft³ Bir Allah gas field for export and domestic markets. The area lies 50km north of GTA and exclusively in Mauritanian waters, according to Khaled, with two wells already having been sunk. Bir Allah is "three times bigger than GTA", he said.
BP and Kosmos Energy signed an exploration and production-sharing agreement for the site in late 2022, with BP saying gas from the field will be used to expand GTA to 10mn t/yr.
It is unclear whether BP or Kosmos Energy are still partners in the Bir Allah development project.
