"I'm going to plagiarize one of my predecessors: I don't know why we should jump like goats from the Pyrenees on that gas pipeline [Midcat], to say that we are going to solve the gas problem."
Words by Emmanuel Macron yesterday in Paris after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the energy crisis. A sour tone to bury, possibly definitively, the solution supported by Germany, Spain and Portugal, to reinforce the European gas network with contributions from the Iberian Peninsula (gas from Algeria and regasified liquefied gas in the eight plants that exist in Spain and Portugal ). Unfriendly words that reveal a remarkable anger.
We are not going to jump like goats from the Pyrenees to give more strategic power to the union of interests between Spain and Portugal, and neither are we going to play the kid with Germany, whose real interest is to get around the Russian fuel cutoff (confirmed yesterday by Moscow ) and begin to weave a green gas and hydrogen network with North Africa through the Iberian Peninsula. That is the real message from President Macron.
If Germany has a drama with Russian gas, France will help directly. The French government is planning the installation of a floating regasification plant in the port of Le Havre (Normandy) that could send fuel to Germany through its northern network. [France has two gas distribution networks, one in the north and one in the south, poorly connected to each other and managed by different companies. The southern company is favorable to Midcat].
In exchange, France will buy more electricity from Germany. That's the advertised deal. Indeed, Électricité de France is in difficulty since half of its 56 nuclear reactors are in very poor performance due to maintenance problems that are costly and slow to repair.
In short: Paris does not want the balance of power within the Franco-German axis to be affected by the energy crisis. France also does not want to lose logistical power to Germany, after swallowing the German rejection of atomic energy, with all the damage that this has caused for its nuclear industry, eager to export technology.
Macron does not like the goats of the Pyrenees, he does not like the Midcat, he does not like the Mediterranean corridor (there are going to be connection problems between the Spanish freight trains and the French rail network when the corridor starts operating from Valencia) and nor is he enthusiastic about the connection to the high-speed Basque network. Macron does not like a reinforced friendship between Spain and Germany, since he was working with Mario Draghi on a reinforced friendship with Italy, which now nobody knows how it will end.
There are technical arguments, of course. The reports put forward by the French president say that the current connections with Spain (two modest gas pipelines that go through the Basque Country and Navarra) are not at full capacity. The truth is that before the summer those two gas pipelines were at full capacity sending gas to France. And the truth is that the electricity that Spain currently sells to France is generated with gas, that is, the high-voltage cables also transport gas to the other side of the Pyrenees.
Pedro Sánchez appears today in the Senate and perhaps the Guadarrama goats will jump.
