Spain mulls gas pipeline with Italy as excitement over French connection wanes

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - The Spanish energy minister said on Thursday that Spain was studying the possibility of building an offshore pipeline linking Barcelona and Italy.

Teresa Ribera's comments came after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the Italy pipeline a “Plan B” and “alternative” to the construction of the MidCat pipeline, which would connect Catalonia with France over the Pyrenees mountains.

Spain is home to around 35% of the liquified natural gas (LNG) storage capacity and 37% of the regasification capacity in the EU and UK’s large-scale import terminals, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.

However, Spain lacks robust connections to the European gas pipeline network.

While Spanish officials have vowed they could have the MidCat pipeline operational in little more than a year, France is calling the project into question.

Last week, France’s Energy Ministry estimated that the pipeline would take “many years” to come into operation, and instead pushed for more direct LNG infrastructure.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also weighed in, saying a pipeline linking Portugal, Spain, and France to central Europe was “conspicuously absent” but that one could make “a massive contribution” to ease the supply crisis.

“Obviously, it’s important to listen to France, but we can’t understand this as a bilateral dispute because it isn’t. Spain doesn’t need to export gas; Spain is willing to export gas to help Europe,” said Ribera. “So if Europe needs help, European institutes also get involved in the debate.”

The minister added that Spain should also “seriously” consider the offshore pipeline connecting a major regasification plant in Barcelona with a smaller one in Livorno, Italy.

“It would be a more complicated piece of engineering. The easiest and cleanest approach, for a country that calls itself Europeanist and in the middle of a critical moment for Europe, would be the France-Spain connection,” she added.

Ribera said new pipelines would start carrying natural gas to replace the Russian supply. Eventually, they would shift to transporting a mix of biogas and natural gas, and then finally to green hydrogen.