Can Spain be an alternative supplier of gas to Europe?

Linked by a gas pipeline to Algeria and equipped with large regasification terminals, Spain could be an alternative to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, but that would imply enormous work to improve connections with the rest of the region.

“Spain can play an important role in supplying” Europe’s energy sector, the president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, said on Saturday in Madrid to meet with the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.

Spain has, in fact, six terminals that allow regasification and storage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported by sea. It is the most important network in Europe.

In addition, it is supplied directly thanks to a 750-kilometer-long underground gas pipeline that connects Algeria with the Andalusian coast in the south of the country: the Medgaz, with a capacity of 10,000 million cubic meters per year.

A second gas pipeline with an equivalent capacity links Spain with Algeria via Morocco: the GME (Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline). Its operation was suspended in November by Algeria in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Rabat, but it was not dismantled.

“Part of the solution”

For this reason, Spain stands out within the European Union (EU). “The country has a supply capacity that is both important and diversified” and “depends very little on Russian gas”indicates Thierry Bros, specialist in the sector and professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).

According to the GIE, an association in Brussels that brings together European gas infrastructure operators, a third of the regasification capacity of the EU and the United Kingdom is located on the Iberian Peninsula.

A situation that the Spanish government wants to use for the benefit of the EU. “This great capacity that we have, it makes sense that it could also be beneficial for our neighbors.” and thus guarantee them the “supply”, said the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, on Tuesday.

For Gonzalo Escribano, a researcher at the Elcano Institute in Madrid, Spain and Portugal, gathered in the so-called “Iberian gas market, have a monthly import capacity of 40 terawatt hours (TWh). And both consume on average less than 30 TWh.

“That means that we could export at least 10 TWh per month, without taking into account the potential linked to the GME. it’s quite important”, explained Escribano, for whom Spain “can be part of the solution” to the problem of European dependence on Russia.

But the infrastructure that would allow such quantities of gas to be exported does not exist, since Spain only has two connections with French gas pipelines, in Irún (Basque Country) and Larrau (Navarra), in the north of the country, but with low capacity.

Without “rewrite history”

Faced with this weakness, a gas pipeline project between Catalonia and the French southeast was launched in 2013, but that idea, baptized MidCat, was abandoned in 2019 due to a lack of agreement on its financing and real support from France, unconvinced of its usefulness. .

A feasibility study requested by the European Commission concluded in 2018 that in effect this infrastructure, whose cost would rise to more than 440 million euros (US$ 480 million), would be neither profitable nor necessary, since Europe already has several terminals little used regasification.

Could this project be relaunched in view of the new international context? The Spanish Vice President for Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, was in favor on Monday, although pointing out that this interconnection should also transport “green hydrogen”.

“We must work on the interconnections. It is one of the priorities”, stressed Von der Leyen on Saturday. A message echoed by the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Augusto Santos Silva, in favor of the creation of an additional gas pipeline between Spain and France.

Experts are more cautious. For Gonzalo Escribano, “the context has changed” and could justify “restart the project but “the works will take years” to finish.

“A project like that requires at least four or five years of work, it is not a short-term solution.”, agrees Thierry Bros, skeptical about the usefulness of this infrastructure, considering that “Algeria’s capacity to supply the Russian supply is limited”.

“We will not rewrite history”, insists the analyst, for whom it is necessary to find solutions “more adapted”. “The country with the greatest gas needs is Germany, so it would be more useful to have regasification terminals there than a gas pipeline between Spain and France”, he adds.