“Nigerian Defeat Will Bring Disaster to the West”
Russian Study Shows Widespread Conflict in Africa: “Nigerian Defeat Will Bring Disaster to the West – War Will Disrupt EU Energy Pipelines”
“End of blue fuel exports to the EU – Russia is the only winner and dominant”
If Nigeria loses and Niger and the pro-Russian coalition win, the EU will have suffered an unprecedented energy disaster, Russian analysts say.
The Russian report foreshadows generalized conflict in Africa between the two dominant blocs:
the pro-Western coalition with Nigeria, ECOWAS, USA, France and the pro-Russian coalition with Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Algeria and of course, Wagner.
According to the Russians, the loss of Niger and its resources is a strategic defeat for France and the EU. Not only because Niger’s new authorities stopped the delivery of uranium and gold, but mainly because a war could destroy natural gas pipelines and oil to the EU.
The pipeline issue: The war between Niger and Nigeria will damage the EU irreparably
Russian analysts note that a war in Africa could turn out to be extremely favorable for Moscow.
They note the following:
“Every day the great war in West Africa becomes more and more real. Niger’s new authorities have refused to supply Paris with uranium, which is critical to the operation of nuclear power plants, as well as gold.
Encouraged by the French and the Americans, neighboring Nigeria is preparing to carry out its own “special military operation”.
“Next door gas station”
Nigeria is located in West Africa, bordering Niger to the north, Chad to the northeast, Cameroon to the east and Benin to the west.
The country is divided along religious lines: Muslims dominate the north, Christians and followers of local traditional beliefs dominate the south. Sharia law is in force in the northern states while there are many Islamic armed groups. Islamists terrorize the local population and fight against the central government. The country’s northern borders are poorly guarded and practically open to smugglers.
Nigeria’s main problem is the strong socio-economic stratification of its society. Only 3% of the population uses all the benefits available from the sale of hydrocarbons. Over 90% of Nigerians live on $2 a day.
The main blessing and at the same time the curse of Nigeria is its rich reserves of oil and natural gas. The main hydrocarbon deposits were explored and developed by Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil in the middle of the last century and are located in the Niger River Valley.
Oil and gas reserves concentrated on the country’s continental shelf are considered even more promising. It is known that there is extensive smuggling of oil through special pipelines and oil storage facilities.
This is a brief background so that readers can have a general idea of the internal situation of Nigeria, which was to organize a special operation “to bring western democracy” to neighboring Niger.
Conductors
The fact is that Nigeria is a direct competitor of Russia in the European energy market.
After the collective West imposed anti-Russian sanctions and banned itself from buying our oil and gas, its eyes turned to Nigeria, which has large hydrocarbon reserves.
Nigeria’s natural gas has long been exported by sea in the form of liquefied natural gas, but Brussels wants to get cheaper raw materials in the form of pipelines. And here there are two projects, one more difficult than the other.
First is the Trans-Saharan gas pipeline, which was supposed to run from Nigeria through Niger to Algeria and connect there to the already existing pipeline system to the EU.
The preliminary cost of the project is 13 billion dollars, the length of the pipeline is 4,128 kilometers and the capacity is 30 billion cubic meters per year. The main obstacle was that the main gas pipeline had to pass through territory controlled by Islamic groups.
The second project – this is a bypass pipeline that was supposed to connect Nigeria to Morocco, either by land or even by sea, so that it does not come into contact with transit countries.
Its cost is already estimated at 20-25 billion dollars and the total length is 5600 kilometers (3840 miles). Payback periods are generally difficult to calculate due to general global volatility and price fluctuations in the energy market.
Now Niger and Algeria, which have become hostile states to Nigeria are standing in the way of the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline.
The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) would transport billions of cubic meters of natural gas from Nigeria to West Africa, north through Niger and into Algeria. From there it could be pumped through the Transmed Mediterranean undersea pipeline to Italy or loaded onto LNG tankers for export.
If, during a direct military conflict with Niger, the infrastructure for the extraction and transportation of hydrocarbon raw materials to Europe is destroyed, the natural gas of the Nigerian pipeline as a competitor to Gazprom will be sidelined for a long time.
So, in general, the military victory of Niger and the pro-Russian coalition of African countries over Nigeria is objectively beneficial.
Especially in the context of the reduction of blue fuel exports to the EU”.
See the pipeline map
