With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the project of the MidCatthe gas pipeline that was supposed to connect Spain with France through the Pyrenees, paralyzed for years. One of the entities that pressed the most for this project to be carried out was the Catalan employers’ association Workforce Development. The Government assumed the idea with the aim that in the future it would serve to transport green hydrogen. After the last meeting of the presidents Pedro Sanchez, Emmanuel Macron (France) and Anthony Costa (Portugal), the MidCat has become history and the agreed alternative, baptized as BarMar, without many technical or financing details having been disclosed, is an underwater pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille, baptized as BarMar, to transport green hydrogen and temporarily, natural gas.
One of the main changes is that the connection, instead of being carried out through the Pyrenees, an idea rejected by the French president for considering it costly and for understanding that it would come into operation in a few years, will be submarine. This 360-kilometre green corridor will connect the port of Barcelona, where the largest of the six regasification plants on the Iberian Peninsula is located (they transform liquid gas transported by boat), with the port of Marseille. This will make it possible to transport the gas that comes from Algeria through the Iberian Peninsula and take it to France and from there to the rest of Europe. That is why Germany, which has pushed for some kind of interconnection to reduce its high dependence on Russian gas, applauds the initiative. What seems to be rejected is another underwater connection between Barcelona and the Italian port of Livorno, which are also claimed by entities such as Foment del Treball. To ensure the interconnections of renewable sources in the future, the agreement includes a commitment to complete the project that connects Celourico da Beira, in Portugal, and Zamora (CelZa).
Another of the changes with respect to the MidCat, designed to transport the gas and in the future modify it so that it could circulate through the same green hydrogen, is that it is thought the other way around. In other words, it will be designed to carry green hydrogen, a non-polluting fuel obtained through the use of renewable energies in its production, and initially, during a transition period, to circulate through the same natural gas.
One of the keys to the project, as happened with MidCat, is who or how it will be financed. The Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, defended that since it is a European project, MidCat should be financed by the European Union (EU). It has not been detailed in the BarMar case where the money will come from or who will finance it. This is an essential matter. Spain bets on European funds. That will be one of the discussion points in the coming weeks. Nor has the cost of this infrastructure been disclosed.
The winners and losers
Burying the MidCat, with a planned investment of more than 3,000 million euros in which Enagás was to participate, without any alternative would have been a real defeat for Spain and Portugal, which also benefit from BarMar and will improve their interconnection with the Spanish grid. With the proposed new infrastructure, French President Emmanuel Macron avoids internal conflicts by burying a gas pipeline that was supposed to run through a protected area. For their part, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Costa, the presidents of Spain and Portugal, can ‘sell’ that they have reached an agreement for an interconnection with the rest of the continent. One of the ideas is that Barcelona and, therefore, Spain, become the ‘hub’ for gas and then for green hydrogen in southern Europe. It is something that also stimulates a planned project with European funds such as the hydrogen valley in the Tarragona area and which has deserved the applause of the ‘president’ Pere Aragonès.
That is one of the unknowns, when will the new infrastructure be able to work? No forecasts have been released in this regard, but in any case it is a work in the medium or long term, with essential issues to be resolved such as financing. It is one of the keys: if it is considered a project between individual countries or a project of European scope and therefore deserves to be financed by Brussels.