Minister of Energy: Mauritania has enormous potential in the production of gas, green hydrogen and green steel
The Mauritanian Minister of Petroleum, Mines and Energy, Mr. Abdessalam Ould Mohamed Saleh, said that the development prospects of the energy and mining sector in Mauritania are promising, explaining that this sector will contribute to transform the national economy and improve its performance.
The Minister added, in a speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the sixth edition of the Conference-Exposition of the Mauritanides, that the realization of the vision adopted by the sector requires a lot of work at all levels, especially in terms of capacity building and good governance implementation.
In this context, he stressed that Mauritania “has great capacities in the production of gas, mining and renewable energies”, pointing out that the Mauritanian coastal basin, which represents an extension of the MSGBC basin shared with Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea Conakry, contain large gas reserves estimated at around 100 TCF.
Regarding the renewable energies, the Minister indicated that Mauritania has a potential of approximately 4,000 GW, including 500 GW having very competitive advantages.
With regard to the mining field, the Minister highlighted that the SNIM company is set to increase its production capacity this year to reach 13.3 million tons, affirming that the first stone of the Fderik project will be laid in the coming weeks. The launch of this project is expected to permit the production of 2 to 3 million tonnes per year, thus bringing SNIM’s total production to 16 million tonnes per year by 2025.
In this regard, the Minister added that the sector is hard at work to obtain the necessary funding to launch the El-Ouj megaproject, which aims to produce, annually, 11 million tons of magnetite concentrated at 66% .
