this governments of Spain and France agreed this friday continue to evaluate the feasibility of the gas pipeline MidCat is within a group of community and national experts to determine if it will be an important project for the fall and winter of 2023-2024.
At the press conference held after the 27th extraordinary meeting of Energy Ministers, Teresa Ribera, Vice President and Minister of Ecological Transition, said: it was an ‘opportunity’ to talk about this infrastructure with ‘different colleagues’ in the roomIncluding French Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
We decided that the interconnection technical group, together with regulators, governments and operators of the gas transport system, should conduct a rapid assessment of what infrastructures need to be strengthened to arrive on time for the fall-winter 2023-2024 season,” Ribera explained.
This includes, in addition to MidCat, the evaluation of: “Any other action that may be considered in this regard”said the Spanish vice president.
“I think the technical assessment capacity of where and how we can get there in October 2023 is a good thing.”
In Ribera’s view, this decision helps to “better understand the extent to which processing can be accelerated” and whether it does. “It could be a part of the process that could be simplified to a greater extent” and the other part may be “more complex, more costly or time consuming” depending on the Member State.
In this way, Madrid and Paris opted for talks about the future of MidCat, whose construction Spain advocates. with the support of Germany but rejects France.
Last Tuesday, Tuesday, the European Commission refrained from openly supporting the construction of the MidCat gas pipeline, only pointing out that its future depends on discussions between “interested” countries.
A day earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron strongly opposed the project, arguing that the other two pipelines, which currently connect the two countries via the Basque Country and Navarra, are “underused” because they are in use. 53% since February.