Liquefied natural gas carrier near the port of Cartagena, Spain on January 27, 2022. BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
While Europe seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, Spain intends to position itself as a strategic “hub” for diversifying sources of supplies to the continent. “We can be an alternative to Russian gas,” the Foreign Ministry insisted in early February, even before the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, this idea has gained ground. “Thanks to its great energy potential and extensive experience in the field of renewable energy, Spain can and will play an important role in supplying Europe,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen finally confirmed during a visit to Madrid on March 5. And for that, we must work on the relationship between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the European Union. [UE]. »
A file resurfaced on the table that we thought was definitely buried: MidCat. Launched by Spain, Portugal and France in 2003 across the Pyrenees between Catalonia and southwestern France, this gas pipeline project was supposed to connect the Spanish and Portuguese grids to the European grid and help open up the Iberian Peninsula, a true “energy island” that has less than 5% interconnections is far from the 15% required by Europe.
“Failure to complete MidCat was a strategic mistake,” José Manuel García-Margallo, former Spanish foreign minister.
With an estimated cost of 400 million euros in the first phase of development, the infrastructure even featured for a while among the priority infrastructures of the EU before it was abandoned in 2019 amid demonstrations by opponents of environmental protection.
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“Not completing MidCat was a strategic mistake,” laments former Spanish foreign minister from 2011 to 2016, José Manuel García-Margallo. With other gas pipelines and regasification plants, Spain could become a real alternative to Russian gas. But a study commissioned by the European Commission found that the pipeline would be neither profitable nor necessary. In July 2018, Emmanuel Macron admitted during a meeting in Lisbon that he “wasn’t convinced” of the gas connections. Due to the lack of consensus on the distribution of costs, but, above all, interest from the French side, the project was finally buried in 2019 by the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE). What called into question the relationship between the benefits and costs of infrastructure and its strategic interests …
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