A tunnel link between Europe and Africa drew closer to reality last month after Spanish and Moroccan officials agreed to allocate US$32M over the next two years to research the project’s feasibility. Nearly 90% of this will be allocated to core drilling to determine the tunnel alignment.
Already established are the tunnel portal locations. The Spanish side will start at Punta Paloma, 40km west of Gibraltar, whilst the Moroccan portal will be at Punta Malabata, near Tangiers. The current route is 38.5km long, 27km of which will be under the Straight of Gibraltar at depths of 300m. The shortest crossing is 19km, but at 900m b.s.l, the seabed was considered too deep for tunnelling. The design is said to be based on the Channel Tunnel with twin 7.5m diameter tubes and a central service tunnel, all linked by cross passages.
Spain has constructed a 500m long trial tunnel, 4m in diameter, to assess the conditions near its portal, whilst Morocco has sunk a 300m deep shaft near Tangiers.
Construction is unlikely to begin before 2008 as the trials are to be exhaustive for what Francisco Alvarez Cascos, Spain’s minister of development has described as, “in the 21st century what the Suez Canal was in the 19th century.”
With a price of US$3.8bn, both countries are hoping that funding for the tunnel will be shouldered by the European Union.
