The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline has been proposed, signed, studied, revived, and abandoned so many times since the 1970s that serious energy analysts long treated it as Africa’s permanent mirage. This week, Sonatrach dispatched a technical team to Niamey to collect route data on Nigerien territory. The operational phase is set to launch immediately after Ramadan. The pipeline is no longer a political announcement. It is a construction project.
The facts as they stand: a 4,128-kilometre pipeline connecting Nigeria’s gas fields at Warri to Algeria’s transmission hub at Hassi R’Mel, passing through Niger. Total investment estimated at $13bn. Design throughput capacity of 30 billion cubic metres per year. Sonatrach designated as lead construction entity under direct instruction from President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Nigeria represented through NNPC, Niger through SONIDEP. From Hassi R’Mel, gas flows into existing pipelines to Europe: the Trans-Mediterranean to Italy, Medgaz to Spain, and Maghreb-Europe to Portugal and Spain. Construction authorisation was scheduled for late March 2026, immediately following the conclusion of Ramadan.
The route breaks into three national segments. Nigeria’s segment runs 1,037km from Warri northward to the Niger border. Niger’s segment covers 841km across some of the most challenging and least developed terrain in the Sahara. Algeria’s segment runs 2,310km, more than half the total length, connecting to the existing Mediterranean export infrastructure at Hassi R’Mel. The Nigerian and Algerian segments are already significantly advanced: the Wikipedia entry on the project, drawing on Algerian government statements, notes that work in both Nigeria and Algeria is more than 70% complete. Only Niger’s section is substantially unbuilt, and it is the Niger section that Sonatrach’s team in Niamey is now surveying.
How the last obstacle was removed
The project’s most recent near-death experience was political rather than technical. In July 2023, Niger’s military junta expelled the French ambassador and aligned itself with the Sahel’s anti-Western bloc alongside Mali and Burkina Faso. Algeria, which had maintained close relations with Niger’s previous democratic government, found itself in a difficult position. The junta severed diplomatic relations with Algeria in April 2025 following a dispute over transit rights and political alignment. That standoff threatened to make the Niger segment permanently unfeasible: you cannot build a pipeline through a country whose government will not let you in.
The Algeria-Niger diplomatic reconciliation of February 2026 resolved the impasse. As covered in an earlier Africaspoint analysis of the Algeria-Niger rapprochement, the reconciliation was driven in part by economic necessity on both sides: Algeria needs the pipeline’s European revenue and its strategic positioning as a gas hub, and Niger’s junta needs infrastructure investment and revenue that does not depend on Western donors it has expelled. The two countries’ economic interests aligned even when their political relationships were strained.
Analysts note that the 2024 Beijing Summit agreement between China and African leaders to shift from debt-led to investment-led infrastructure financing also changed the pipeline’s financial architecture. The $13bn project was always going to require multilateral financing. With Chinese development finance institutions willing to participate as equity investors rather than lenders, and with European energy companies including Eni and TotalEnergies expressing interest given Europe’s ban on all Russian gas imports in January 2026, the capital stack is more credible in 2026 than at any previous point in the project’s history.
Why this moment is different from every previous one
The Trans-Saharan pipeline idea was first proposed in the 1970s. A 2002 MoU between NNPC and Sonatrach led to a 2006 Penspen feasibility study that confirmed technical and economic viability. The project was revived in 2009, stalled again, revived at a 2022 ministerial meeting, advanced with three new agreements signed in February 2025, and has now entered physical construction surveying in March 2026. Each previous cycle ended with inertia. This one is different for three specific reasons.
First, the European demand signal is genuinely urgent. Europe’s January 2026 ban on remaining Russian gas flows eliminated the last political argument for delaying African supply diversification. As covered in Africaspoint’s analysis of Africa as Europe’s gas lifeline, African energy ministers are now in active negotiation with European buyers for long-term supply contracts. The Trans-Saharan pipeline, connecting Nigeria’s proven gas reserves directly to European import infrastructure, is the highest-capacity African contribution to that supply shift available. A fully operational pipeline at 30 billion cubic metres per year would represent approximately 8% to 10% of total European gas imports, a material contribution to supply security.
Second, the Iran war disruption has tightened the timeline from urgent to critical. With Middle Eastern gas supplies disrupted and Strait of Hormuz transits at risk, European buyers who might have tolerated a five-year pipeline timeline are now pressing for faster commitments. The Trans-Saharan pipeline’s completion timeline of seven to ten years from construction start means even accelerated execution will not resolve Europe’s immediate 2026 supply stress. But it will define European gas supply security in the 2030s and 2040s, and buyers are pricing that into offtake discussions now.
Third, the operational momentum is genuine. Sonatrach does not send technical teams to Niamey to conduct legal and regulatory reviews without presidential instruction and a construction mandate. The mission is reviewing Niger’s pipeline installation regulations, required risk and environmental impact assessments, and construction permits. This is pre-construction groundwork. It is not another study announcement.
Algeria’s strategic position
Algeria is Africa’s third-largest oil producer and one of its largest gas exporters, with Sonatrach one of the world’s fifteen largest oil and gas companies by production. Natural gas accounts for 90% of Algeria’s export revenue. The country exported approximately 54 billion cubic metres annually before the construction of the Trans-Saharan pipeline adds Nigerian volumes to its transmission network. At full throughput, Algeria becomes not just an exporter of its own gas but the primary transit hub for sub-Saharan African gas reaching European markets, a position analogous to what Ukraine was for Russian gas before 2022.
That strategic position is precisely why Tebboune has made the pipeline a presidential priority. Algeria’s domestic gas fields at Hassi R’Mel are ageing. ALNAFT is running its 2026 licensing round to develop new acreage, but new fields take a decade to reach production. Transit revenues from Nigerian gas, combined with the geopolitical leverage that comes from controlling Europe’s most direct African gas corridor, extend Algeria’s energy relevance well beyond its own reserve life. The pipeline is not just an infrastructure project. It is Algeria’s 30-year energy strategy in a single asset.
Nigeria’s calculation
Nigeria holds the largest proven natural gas reserves in Africa and the ninth-largest in the world, approximately 209 trillion cubic feet. The country has historically flared much of its associated gas, representing both an environmental failure and an economic one. The Trans-Saharan pipeline provides an export route for gas that would otherwise be stranded or flared, generating revenue that Nigeria’s fiscal position urgently needs. NNPC’s participation through Olalekan Ogunleye’s signatory role in the 2025 agreements reflects the government’s commitment to monetising reserves rather than burning them.
The pipeline also advances Nigeria’s positioning within the context of the Dangote Refinery’s expansion and its growing role as a regional energy supplier, as covered in South Africa’s current scramble for Dangote fuel. A Nigeria that both refines petroleum domestically and exports gas through a continental corridor is a qualitatively different energy actor from the one that spent decades importing its own refined products. The pipeline is part of the same strategic shift.
Bigger Picture: The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline has been proposed for fifty years. It has been studied, signed, abandoned, and revived eight times. It is now in active pre-construction surveying with a technical team on the ground in Niger, a construction launch scheduled for this month, and a geopolitical context, European gas desperation combined with Middle East supply disruption, that makes it more commercially viable than at any previous point in its history. The $13bn project connecting 4,128 kilometres of pipeline from Warri to the Mediterranean will define African energy infrastructure for the next four decades. The CEO who dismissed it as a fantasy in 2023 was right. The one who dismisses it in 2026 is not paying attention.
Source: AGBI / Africa News / Energy Capital Power
