Mediterranean conference on energy calls for grids interconnections

The 5th ministerial conference on energy cooperation in the Mediterranean held in Casablanca Tuesday adopted a final declaration, calling on Mediterranean Countries to further efforts to ensure success to the electric grids interconnections process.

The conference probed means of promoting cooperation in matters of energy between the two shores of the Mediterranean through increasing investment, consolidating infrastructure and enhancing exchanges and transit of energy products, in the perspective of setting up an integrated energy market in the region.

Ministers, energy policy officials and experts stressed the need to update studies on projected interconnections between the two shores, while taking into account the technological and economic evolution, and the new opportunities to promote interconnections with Europe, after the setting up of the European internal market of electric energy and natural gas.

The declaration urges Mediterranean countries to explore renewable energies technologies and to speed up the liberalization of the gas market in the region.

It also calls for the adoption and respect of environment standards to protect the Mediterranean basin from pollution.

The 4th conference was held in Rome in 1998 and the coming conference will convene in France in 2002.

The ministerial conferences musters 11 countries (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain and focuses its activities on electric interconnections. It also deals with gas networks and renewable energies sources.