After the support given last Thursday by the German Chancellor, Olaf Sholz, to the construction of the Midcat gas pipeline to channel gas from the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of Europe, the Third Vice President and Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has not been slow to move tab.
Not even 24 hours had passed since Scholz's statements when Ribera set a date for the project. "Within eight or nine months the Spanish part could be operational," assured the third vice president. “But it makes little sense for us to run a lot if, on the French side, it becomes a dead end”, she added to transfer the pressure of promoting this critical infrastructure for Spain and, now also for Europe, to the French roof.
After years of unsuccessful negotiations between Spain and France, the German Chancellor's statements on Thursday may change the rules of the game. "They show that interconnections are not a bilateral issue, but one of importance for the European Union as a whole," said Teresa Ribera yesterday.
The Midcat gas pipeline project has been kept in the drawer for years due to the disinterest of the French State in a connection that until now seemed to benefit only the energy island made up of Spain and Portugal. In 2019, the Spanish and French competition authorities knocked it down and, despite having the support of Brussels, the European Union removed it a year after its priority projects because it was considered not economically viable. At that time, Russian gas was reliable and cheaper than that from Algeria or from the regasification activity of liquefied natural gas (which arrives by ship) from the six plants that Spain has. Thus, the 226 km that must connect the Catalan town of Hostalric with the French town of Barbaira remained unbuilt, a project that required an investment of close to 400 million euros and that would double the Spanish gas export capacity.
But beyond political support for Midcat to be effective, France must reinforce and expand its network of gas pipelines in the south of the country in order to guarantee an efficient and safe connection with the rest of Europe. A commitment that until now Paris has not been willing to assume.
This is why Ribera defends the need to include Germany at the Midcat table and involve the entire European Union, both at a political level, as an element of pressure on France, and at an economic level, to support the cost of the infrastructure. The minister herself has always defended that the Spanish have already paid for the construction of the regasification plants and should not do so again.
The project also has the support of Catalan companies and authorities that must also give their approval. Yesterday, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, celebrated on Twitter "the passage of the German chancellor" and recalled that "it is essential that the EU give support and financing" to a project "that we have been claiming for months because it is strategic for Europe and for Catalonia”.
Along the same lines, the president of the Catalan employers' organization Foment del Treball, Josep Sánchez Llibre, applauded Germany's position and urged the Spanish government to "lead" this project.
Along with political support and European funding, the condition that Ribera has set for advancing in Midcat is that it be seen as a long-term infrastructure. In other words, not only is it suitable for transporting gas, which is necessary in the first stage of transition, but it also allows it to adapt to green hydrogen, which is expected to be the sustainable gas of the future and which needs a different pressure to be pumped. The aim is that the useful life of the new infrastructure is around 40 or 50 years.
In any case, the Midcat will not be able to solve the energy emergency that Europe has this winter. Spain defends its capacity as a strategic hub for gas supply to Europe in the short term. For this, the government plan goes through three types of interventions. The fastest is to install, in about three months, an additional compressor in the current gas pipelines that pass through Irun, in the Basque Country, and Larrain, in Navarra, to expand their current capacity of 7,000 million cubic meters by 20% and 30%, around 2,000 million cubic meters. "That would mean the capacity to channel at least two more methane tankers," explained Ribera. Also in the short term, the El Musel regasification plant in Gijón could be recovered.
On the other hand, Spain is promoting a logistics connection between Barcelona and Livorno (Italy). Barcelona receives large methane tankers whose gas would be transported through smaller ships to Livorno. A connection for which the construction of a gas pipeline is also being studied in the long term.
