France, Spain and Portugal announced on Thursday that they had reached an agreement to replace the MidCat project with an underwater gas pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille, intended to transport gas and then green hydrogen.
Initially launched in 2003, the MidCat (short for Midi-Catalonia) project aimed to link the gas networks of France and Spain via a 190-kilometre gas pipeline from Hostalric, north of Barcelona, to Barbaira, east of Barcelona. from Carcassonne, through the Pyrenees.
“We have agreed to replace the MidCat project with a new project, which will be called Green Energy Corridor, to connect the Iberian Peninsula with France and therefore with the European energy market between Barcelona and Marseille”, explained the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, upon his arrival in Brussels for a European summit dedicated to the energy crisis.
Completion in December
“It is about creating a gas pipeline for green hydrogen but also temporarily for gas, which the European energy market needs,” he said.
Mr. Sánchez, French President Emmanuel Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa will meet on December 8-9 in Alicante, Spain to finalize the agreement.
Defended by Madrid and Lisbon but also by Berlin, which sees it as a way to reduce the EU’s dependence on Russian gas, the MidCat should allow Spain, which has 30% of Europe’s capacity, to regasify liquefied natural gas ( LNG), export gas, coming by ship from the United States or Qatar, to the rest of Europe.
Intensification of interconnections
This project – abandoned in 2019 due to its environmental impact and an economic interest then considered limited – also intended to enable the transport of green hydrogen in the longer term, the energy of the future produced thanks to renewable energies, among which Spain wants to be one of the Champions.
Mr. Macron announced “the abandonment of the historic MidCat project (…) to promote a project that we will work on in the coming weeks very intensely as a trio.”
“The objective is to work on the intensification of our electrical interconnections and their densification, and to work on a hydrogen and renewable energy interconnection between Barcelona and Marseille”, he specified.
“Then the objective of being better connected with the rest of the continent through Spain and Portugal is thus raised, and then the objective that was ours, to continue with our climate and energy transition strategy, corresponds to this new project,” he continued. , adding that the project should benefit from European funding.
Source: BFM TV
