“Spain has already complied with the 15% reduction in gas consumption that the European Union set as a voluntary objective, so no more deductions would have to be made to comply with the regulation.” This is how explicit Susana de Pablo, CEO of Enagás GNL, was yesterday during the Gas Industrial Forum 2022, the annual meeting of the gas industry that was held in Madrid.
De Pablo explained that this saving does not come from an effort made to modify habits or fuels, but from the sharp drop in industry activity, which in the month of October alone was 35% lower than that of the same month of the previous year. If the production of the combined cycles that has been necessary to cover the demand for exports to France and Portugal is deducted from this decrease in activity, Spain would already be in a position to not have to apply any of the saving measures proposed by the Government.
Although that is not what the country’s large gas industry has requested. Quite the contrary. Verónica Rivière, the president of GasIndustrial, an association that encompasses large industrial gas consumers, warned that this situation “draws a truly critical and uncertain reality for companies with large gas consumption that have stopped producing due to the impossibility of coping at high costs.” For this reason, they demand from the Government “more direct aid” and “a lot of vigilance in the European institutions” to avoid capping the prices of liquefied gas (LNG) in Europe. “An intervention in the markets would have a greater impact on our country, which is the one that receives the most LNG in Europe, and would have unknown consequences that are difficult to assess.” But bad omens are not always fulfilled. As Susana de Pablo acknowledged, “in the face of shortage problems that were predicted for the winter, gas reserves are at record highs and Spain is a priority destination for LNG ships arriving in Europe.”
