Spain expands its capacity to send gas to Europe through France by 18%

The Irun pipeline will admit 1.5 billion cubic meters more of gas to raise the total interconnection to 8.5 billion cubic meters

Ribera announces the adaptation of the Barcelona regasification plant to increase the gas load capacity of Italy and other European neighbors

Spain has expanded its capacity to send gas to France by 18% with an additional compressor in its Basque gas pipeline, a measure announced this summer by the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, together with the reactivation of the El Musel regasification plant (Gijón), which is in hibernation, and the creation of a maritime bridge between Barcelona and Livorno (Italy). Three measures included in the Contingency Plan designed by the Government to help Central European countries face a possible cut in the total supply of Russian gas this winter.

The Vice-President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, visited this Thursday together with the CEO of Enagás, Arturo Gonzalo Aizpiri, the compressor (Euskadour), in Irún (Gipuzkoa) after this infrastructure has “successfully” completed the technical commissioning tests to expand an additional 1,500 million cubic meters of capacity per year of natural gas supply to Europe.

This is an increase in export capacity of 18% over the current one, so that Spain could supply France with the equivalent of 6% of its natural gas consumption, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition. In Spain there are currently two gas pipelines, one in Irún (Basque Country) with a capacity of 2,000 million cubic meters, and another in Larrau (Navarra) of 5,000 million cubic meters. In total, they added a maximum exchange capacity of 7,000 million cubic meters per year, the equivalent of 7 liquefied natural gas ships per month, which are now expanded by 1,500 million cubic meters, up to a total of 8,500 million cubic meters of maximum capacity.

“This capability is not yet being used, and adjustments have to be made to the French system. We expect full operation in the winter campaign, in November and we have the month of October to commercialize this additional capacity.” Thus, the new compressor and, therefore, the possibility of entering this additional gas capacity through the Basque tube will be put into operation on November 1.

At the moment, Spain is not even sending all the gas that these two pipelines can currently transport and, in fact, in August, it was a net importer (France sent more gas to Spain than vice versa). The explanation, according to some experts, is due to the high gas needs in Spain for electricity generation due to drought, lack of water and greater electricity demand, but it is expected that for the winter this situation will be reversed, as happened in the early stages of the war.

“The station is already technically prepared to send that gas when our French neighbors request it,” said the vice president. “Let’s look up. There is no end in sight to this war. That is precisely why we are strategic. Let’s help now, but let’s think about the coming winters. Renewable energies and the interconnections to make them flow between friendly countries are the only way out,” he added, in a reference to the long-awaited MidCat, the gas pipeline that crosses the Pyrenees through Catalonia and that France rejects.

In addition to the gas pipelines, Ribera also advanced in summer that the other two keys to this winter’s solidarity with Europe will be the return to operation of the El Musel regasification plant in Gijón, which will play a strategic role as a logistics center for gas storage for Europe “at the beginning of 2023”. The Vice-President also announced the authorisation of three projects that will maximise solidarity with Italy by adapting the jetty of the Enagás regasification plant in the Port of Barcelona to increase the cargo capacity that gas can carry to European coasts from small ships and the “virtual gas pipeline” with Italy to feed its own regasification plants with small LNG carriers that would come to load the Spanish plants. mainly to Barcelona.

Source: The Newspaper