Spain, France and Portugal will replace the MidCat with a connection between Barcelona and Marseille

Sánchez, Macron and Costa have met before the European Council and will finalize the project in new meetings on December 8 and 9

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Thursday that Spain, Portugal and France have agreed to establish a new pipeline interconnection between Barcelona and Marseille called ‘Green Energy Corridor’ and thus shelve the debate on the construction of the MidCat.

“The agreement for a Barcelona-Marseille green energy corridor is a magnificent decision that deepens solidarity and commitment to renewables,” Sánchez stressed upon his arrival at the European Council held this Thursday in Brussels, in which the Twenty-seven will try to overcome differences on new measures to intervene in the energy market and put a ceiling on high gas prices.

He has also said that this new pipeline will serve to transport gas, but also green hydrogen in the future. The new project will be specified in meetings on December 8 and 9 under the framework of the EuroMed summit in Alicante, where they hope to specify issues such as the “deadlines for investment, cost sharing and the volume of economic resources” necessary.

Sánchez stressed that the understanding comes after “many months of work” and that it will accelerate the process of interconnection of the Iberian Peninsula with the whole of the European Union, through a “Europeanist and solidary” pact and “ecological transition”.

MidCat, buried since 2018

The chief executive met ahead of the summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa. It was Macron who said on October 7, at the end of the informal European Council in Prague, that a three-way meeting would be held to discuss the gas pipeline in Paris. However, since the three leaders would meet in Brussels, it was felt that it was better to hold it in the European capital.

Spain and Portugal have actively and passively defended the completion of the gas pipeline that would link the Catalan town of Hostalric with the French town of Barbaira. However, they have met with the iron refusal of the French president. Macron has been saying that there was no need for new gas interconnections between Spain and France because the current ones are far from saturation even under the current situation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In 2018, a report prepared for the European Commission (EC) was what paralyzed the work of the Midcat by questioning its economic viability due to its high cost, of about 3,000 million euros. Poyry, the consultancy hired by Brussels to supervise the first phase of the project, pointed out that the pipeline would only be profitable under a scenario with a tight LNG market in the face of a hypothetical decline in gas exports from Algeria to Europe.

The MidCat, which had as promoters Enagás and the French company Teréga, has thus been paralyzed for years due to its high cost and the low price of Russian supply. 226 kilometers of pipelines remain to be built. Currently, Spain has two gas connections by tube with France through the Basque Country and Navarra, which allow it to deliver some 8,000 million cubic meters (bcm) per year, approximately 2% of last year’s European demand. The Midcat could add another 7,000 bcm a year.

At the end of September, the Executive announced that Spain will increase the interconnection with France to ensure the supply of gas through Irún. Specifically, the facility has passed the technical tests to expand the supply of natural gas to Europe by an additional 1,500 million cubic meters of capacity per year. This is an increase in export capacity of 18% over the current figure, so that the State could supply France with the equivalent of 6% of its natural gas consumption.

The Euskadour gas pipeline links the Bahía Bizkaia Gas (BBG) regasification plant in Bilbao and the Gaviota storage plant in Bermeo with the Lussagnet underground storage in France. After the tests, Enagás expects this capacity increase to be ready as of November 1, coinciding with the start of the gas winter. If necessary, you could start using this extension immediately because it is technically already available.

Electrical interconnection

At present, the Spanish electricity system is interconnected with the Portuguese -thus configuring the Iberian electricity system-, with that of North Africa, through Morocco, and with the Central European system, -through the border with France-. In turn, the latter is connected to that of the Nordic countries, with that of the countries of Eastern Europe and with the British Isles, which makes up the largest electricity system in the world.

In addition, new projects are being developed, such as another with France through a submarine cable through the Bay of Biscay, the northern interconnection with Portugal between Galicia and the Portuguese Minho and the trans-Pyrenean Navarre-Landes and Aragon-Atlantic Pyrenees. The Spain-France link through the Bay of Biscay is the first submarine electrical interconnection with the neighbouring country. According to the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), this new infrastructure will increase the interconnection capacity with France from the current 2,800 MW to 5,000 MW, and has an estimated cost of 1,750 million euros.

Source: The Objective