France opposed to the France-Spain gas pipeline: it would not be a valid solution
New LNG terminals in Northern and Eastern Europe would be a better option to alleviate the European gas crisis than a new pipeline from Spain to France, the French energy transition ministry said Friday .
A new gas pipeline between Spain and France would take years to become operational and would cost at least 3 billion euros, the French ministry said in a statement reported by Reuters.
For this reason, according to France, a gas pipeline may be too late to alleviate the gas crisis in Europe. “Such a project would take many years to become operational… and therefore would not respond to the current crisis,” the ministry said.
Europe is preparing for a difficult winter, characterized by possible energy rationing, due to the scarce and uncertain supplies of gas pipelines from Russia.
Last week, Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said another natural gas pipeline could soon become operational in Europe to connect Spain and France; the new link could be operational in about nine months. "This new interconnection, this pipeline could be operational in about 8 or 9 months on the side of the southern border, that is, from the Pyrenees to Spain," Ribera said.
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed the idea of a gas pipeline to connect Portugal, Spain and Central Europe via France and said he was in favor of the new link.
Europe is working to rid itself of Russian gas due to mounting tensions with Moscow and the uncertainty of pipeline supplies from Russia, which were curtailed this summer. In addition to importing record volumes of LNG from the United States, European countries are seeking to build more infrastructure to accommodate more gas imports from sources other than Russia.
Spain itself is not dependent on Russian gas, but has six LNG import terminals and is on the route of gas pipelines from North Africa to Europe. Spain, however, is not well connected with other European countries through pipelines, which limits European access to LNG imports. A paradoxical situation that makes Spain and Portugal very favored at the expense of other countries. But they were simply provident.
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The article France opposed to the France-Spain gas pipeline: it would not be a valid solution comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-francia-contraria-al-gasdotto-francia-spagna-non-sarebbe-una-valida-soluzione/ on Sat, 20 Aug 2022 14:30:49 +0000.