Gas: a Spain-France interconnection put back "on the table", according to the French operator

Europe 1 with AFP 2:04 p.m., June 2, 2022

The manager of the French gas network Teréga wants to put "on the table" an interconnection project between Spain and France, announced Thursday its CEO Dominique Mockly.

"We are going to propose in the coming weeks that the south-north projects be put back on the table", declared during a press conference Dominique Mockly, whose company manages the gas network of the south-western quarter of France. .

In 2019, French and Spanish energy regulators gave an unfavorable opinion to a project for a new gas interconnection across the Pyrenees, called Step, which was to precede a larger project called MidCat (Midi-Catalonia).

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The project, which was also criticized by environmental NGOs, was considered costly and unnecessary at the time.

But Teréga, encouraged by the European Commission's renewed interest in this infrastructure, believes that the situation has since changed.

MidCat is of "crucial" importance to "reduce our dependence on Russian fossil fuels", recently judged the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has launched a major plan for the continent's energy independence from live in Russia.

Spain has significant capacities for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), which could thus go back more easily to northern Europe.

"These capacities, in the crisis we have today, we cannot allow ourselves to say that we are going to pass over them and that we are not looking," said Dominique Mockly.

"If our Italian friends are offering a direct connection between Barcelona and Genoa, it's because they won't hesitate to do so," he observed.

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The French regulator very reserved on the subject

According to Teréga, the existing France-Spain gas interconnection is already running frequently at full speed.

And the flow, traditionally directed towards the south, is now flowing towards the north since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

A new link should also serve as "the first brick of the European hydrogen backbone".

"We start with gas but this infrastructure will then have to be sized to switch to hydrogen", indicated Dominique Mockly.

The French regulator was still very reserved on the subject on Wednesday "given the development of LNG terminals in northern Europe, given the proper functioning of our gas terminals, given the cost...".

"Can you imagine? We are going to do Notre-Dame des Landes on the peak of Aneto", had launched the president of the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), Jean-François Carenco, in allusion to an airport project aborted in western France.