HIBAPRESS – Rabat
The Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Leila Benali, affirmed today, Wednesday, in the House of Representatives, that draft law No. 56.24, which provides for the transformation of the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Minerals into a public limited company, falls within a strategic choice aimed at strengthening the Kingdom's energy sovereignty, strengthening the governance of the energy and minerals sectors, and breaking with the manifestations of structural fragility revealed by the global geopolitical and energy transformations in recent years.
The minister explained, in response to the interventions of parliamentarians during the discussion of the project, that this legislative text represents the beginning of a profound reform path that concerns the structure of the state in its relationship with strategic sectors, stressing that the government chose this transformation after a comprehensive evaluation of the experience of the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Minerals, and the constraints it faced, especially in the context of energy dependence that Morocco had experienced for years. 
Leila Benali noted that the Kingdom suffered, for a period of about six years, from energy dependence on neighboring countries, whether at the level of natural gas or some components of the energy infrastructure, which was sharply revealed by the crisis of the cessation of gas supplies in 2021, pointing out that the state, with all its components, was then forced to manage the situation in a complex international context characterized by the war in Ukraine and the fluctuations of the global energy market. The government official added that maintaining energy sovereignty was not a theoretical option, but a social and economic necessity, highlighting that the interruption of gas threatened thousands of jobs and the continuity of sensitive industrial units, including vital institutions, which necessitated accelerating the reuse of the Kingdom's gas infrastructure, within the framework of a purely sovereign approach. In this context, Leila Benali stressed that transforming the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Minerals into a public limited company does not mean abandoning the sovereign role of the state, but on the contrary, aims to enable it to have more efficient and flexible management mechanisms, allowing it to compete with international actors in the minerals sector, which has become an area of strategic competition between countries, similar to what happened in successful international and African experiences. The Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development stressed that this legislative project constitutes a basic building block in building a real energy sovereignty, capable of protecting the national economy from external shocks, and strengthening Morocco's regional and international position in the field of energy and minerals, within the framework of a strong state with its institutions, clear in its choices, and responsible for its energy future.
