Ribera values ​​the gas pipeline with Italy "very seriously" and defends that "Spain does not need to export gas"

Insists that France's reticence towards Midcat does not imply a bilateral dispute

MADRID, 25 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, assured this Thursday that the Government is "very seriously" assessing the possibility of building an underwater gas pipeline with Italy in the face of France's reluctance to end the interconnection through the Pyrenees, the infrastructure known as Midcat.

As for the position of the French Government, he has indicated that it is not a bilateral dispute with the Gallic country, although he has defended that "Spain does not need to export gas", but "is willing to help Europe", as he has assessed in an interview on Antena 3 collected by Europa Press.

"If Europe needs to be helped, it is important that the European institutions and those governments in a worse situation also get involved in a debate that is not just a two-way debate," added Ribera.

Regarding the possibility of building the gas pipeline between Spain and Italy, the head of Ecological Transition explained that it would unite the Barcelona and Livorno regasification plants.

"At the moment, what we are doing is activating a kind of 'maritime bridge' between Barcelona and Livorno. A large regasification plant (the one in Barcelona) with storage capacity and to receive large methane tankers from which smaller methane tankers leave for the another plant (the one in Livorno), older and smaller for regasification", he detailed.

In this way, gas is injected for consumption in Italy, with a high dependence on Russian gas, and also to the connections with the central core of gas pipelines that cross central and northern Europe, the minister explained.

Thus, the possibility that is being assessed is to replace this maritime transport with an underwater gas pipeline to "save costs in the medium and long term", Ribera has deepened.

The idea is that natural gas circulates through the tube at first, then natural gas mixed with biogas and in the medium term green hydrogen.

"It is a more complicated work of engineering (the Italian option). The simple, the clean, in a country that calls itself pro-European, at an extremely critical moment for Europe, is to go for the easiest, for what can be operational for autumn-winter 2023-2024 and which is that connection of the Iberian hydrogen corridor, which in the first instance could transport natural gas through the Pyrenees, doubling the current capacity", the minister added.