Belgium, (Brussels Morning) Portugal and Spain reached an agreement with France on the Iberian gas pipeline to build hydrogen and natural gas between Barcelona and Marseille.
The confirmation was given on October 22 by the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, on the sidelines of the European Council meeting in Brussels, noting that the three countries agreed to replace the Midcat project, intended to connect the Iberian Peninsula to France, with the construction of “a green energy corridor”.
“We reached an agreement to replace the Midcat project with a new project that will be called the “Green Energy Corridor”, which will unite the Iberian Peninsula to France, and therefore to the European energy market,” said Sanchéz.
Europe is scrambling to secure alternative energy supplies after Russia progressively cut gas flows as a response to the West imposed sanctions in light of the invasion of Ukraine.
Countries like Germany, which have been historically more dependent on Russian imports, are looking for alternative solutions, currently receiving gas deliveries from France, the French transmission system operator GRTgaz said.
Meanwhile, gas prices in the Iberian Peninsula fell to their lowest in almost six months since the region has terminals with full storage capacity but lacks the pipeline infrastructure to send it on to other parts of central Europe where there is demand, according to Reuters.
BarMar
Dubbed BarMar, the new pipeline route will include electricity interconnections aiming at accelerating the construction of a new subsea cable which will link France and Spain via the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic coast.
The leaders of the three countries said BarMar was the most efficient and direct possibility to connect the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe.
The new route ends a deadlock between Spain, Portugal and France, as the Iberian bloc wanted to extend the MidCat pipeline to sell gas to central Europe but France argued that the pipeline would take too long to build to resolve short-term supply issues.
However, no estimate on cost or a timeline for the new project were specified.
Euro-Mediterranean summit
The three leaders will meet again on 8 and 9 December in Alicante, Spain, during the Euro-Mediterranean summit to decide on the timeline of the works as well as on the sources of financing and costs related to BarMar.
“We will meet again at the beginning of December with the aim of achieving this understanding, which will contribute to putting an end to the energy isolation of the Iberian Peninsula, to the energy transition and to the security of supply of UE as a whole,” said the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa.
The Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa acknowledged that the BarMar agreement is “very important for Europe” as it allows the entire bloc to benefit from the project in the face of the energy crisis.
