Discord around the MidCat – contraction of Midi and Catalonia.

At a time when Europe is facing energy tensions, the project for a new gas pipeline – in the pipeline since 2013 but which seemed buried in 2019 – between Spain and France continues to provoke political reactions from both sides. and the other from the Pyrenees for several days.

A situation that highlights the divergent points of view of several European states on this issue with, on the one hand, the Berlin-Madrid-Lisbon axis, and on the other, Paris.

Asked Monday, September 5 about the French position vis-à-vis this project, President Emmanuel Macron considered that the need for such an infrastructure was "not obvious": "I do not understand why we would jump like goats of the Pyrenees on this subject to explain that it would solve the gas problem: it is false.

Madrid's response was not long in coming: despite French opposition, Spain will continue to defend the MidCat, a project "of European interest", underlined Tuesday, September 6 the Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera.

This gas pipeline is not just a matter of "bilateral relations" between Paris and Madrid, she said on Onda Cero radio.

"Therefore, the debate (about its usefulness) cannot therefore be closed by the statements of a single country."

If the atmosphere has cooled between Spain and France on the MidCat project, the recent remarks of Germany are not foreign to it.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said twice in August that he was in favor of a new gas pipeline between the two countries.

He defends this option in order to "relieve and relax the supply situation" of gas on the Old Continent and "to improve the interconnections of the European gas network".

To complete the polyphonic European picture, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, brought – like Spain – his support to Berlin, defining this gas pipeline project as a “priority” for his country.

Already gas connections between France and Spain

Before the current cacophony, the MidCat project seemed to have stalled for several years.

The idea of ​​a gas pipeline linking the South to Catalonia was initiated in 2013 by the Spanish and French governments with the support of the European Commission.

The infrastructure was to link Hostalric (north of Barcelona) to the town of Barbaira (east of Carcassonne) in order to transport gas from northern Africa to northern Europe.

But the project quickly took a turn for the worse, its funding being rejected in 2019 by both the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) – an independent administrative authority – and by its Spanish counterpart, the CNMC.

They then consider in a press release that "the project does not meet the needs of the market and does not present sufficient maturity to be able to be the subject of a favorable decision by the regulators and, a fortiori, to be the subject of a cross-border cost allocation decision".

The bill promised to be steep: no less than 500 million euros to build and install nearly 200 kilometers of pipeline.

Added to this is the environmental cost.

The pipeline project quickly sparked opposition from environmental activists.

In 2018, the Friends of the Earth association spoke of a "financial and climatic aberration" about the MidCat.

Then after the funding failed in 2019, Greens MEP Michèle Rivasi believed that “the gas industry should realize that we cannot continue to sink billions of taxpayer dollars to create more fossil fuels. ".

The gas infrastructures linking France and Spain.

© FMM Graphic Studio

The Franco-Spanish pipeline then seemed doomed to oblivion…until this year.

Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, director of the Energy Center of the Jacques Delors Institute, explains this return to the forefront of MidCat by the fact that "'zombie' gas projects, abandoned several years ago, have reappeared since the beginning of the crisis energy in Europe".

In addition, France already has gas connections with Spain: the networks of the two countries are linked by infrastructures in Larrau and Biriatou (Pyrénées-Orientales) – but they have a lower exchange capacity than expected. the MidCat.

"The existing Franco-Spanish gas connections are not used at full capacity", specifies Thomas Pellerin-Carlin.

"The idea of ​​building a new axis when we are not using the current capacity to the full is still special."

Divergent interests between Paris, Madrid, Lisbon and Berlin

France is blocking the MidCat project because it also believes that the installation of new liquefied natural gas terminals in northern and eastern Europe – particularly in Germany – would be a faster and less expensive alternative to the construction of a new gas pipeline.

Paris would have a "medium-term" strategy, according to Thomas Pellerin-Carlin: "What the French president is saying is that with the energy transition and renewable energies there will be less gas consumption in France, in Spain and in Germany, and therefore there is no need to overinvest today in gas capacities."

Still, Portugal and Spain would welcome the realization of this project: Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa indicated in mid-August that "Portugal can play an important role" to help the Europe to become "energy self-sufficient".

A role that Spain also wants to play, which has significant assets: it hosts 34% of the EU's regasification capacity and 45% of the storage capacity between tanks and underground sites, according to Les Échos.

Germany, for its part, is seeking to reorient its energy strategy, which has made it dependent on Moscow.

Before the war in Ukraine, Berlin imported 55% of its gas from Russia.

"Consequently, the current energy situation is very difficult for Germany, which seeks to multiply and diversify the sources of origin of its gas but also the routes through which this gas can pass", explains Thomas Pellerin-Carlin.

"If the MidCat project works, Berlin will pay a little less for gas in the best case, and nothing will happen to them in the worst case," concludes the specialist.

"Whereas, for France, if the project fails, MidCat will have been partly financed by French public money. This will increase the gas bill because the transport network (of this fossil energy) is maintained by a form tax overcharged to users."

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