A new acronym has just slipped into Spanish and European political and energy news. This is BarMar, as the proposal to connect the ports of Barcelona and Marseille has been baptized to channel the natural gas that is regasified in Spain.
It is the alternative that Spain has put on the table to save the French refusal to give free rein to the previous connection project, the well-known Midcat. The head of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez; The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Portuguese prime minister, António Costa, closed on Thursday in Brussels the agreement that should materialize this submarine conduit to initially transport gas and, in a few years, green hydrogen.
The Midcat is the name of the project that sought to build an infrastructure to channel natural gas between Catalonia and the south of France through the Pyrenees. The BarMar is the alternative to that connection that seeks to channel the liquefied gas in Spain with that of France through an underwater gas pipeline between the ports of Barcelona and Marseille.
The BarMar project has been presented as a pipeline to transport hydrogen in the future and, only temporarily, gas. This is a Spanish strategy to counteract the French opposition that refused to invest in Midcat because they said that it was an infrastructure that was going to become obsolete and that it meant investing in polluting energies such as gas.
The truth is that the latest proposal that Spain has been taking to Brussels in relation to the Midcat was to use it temporarily as a pipeline for natural gas and then adapt it to hydrogen. That is, the same but explained in reverse order. According to experts, the new infrastructures are prepared to channel natural gas, with many molecules very similar to hydrogen, and then, with some modifications, adapt it to the transfer of hydrogen. In fact, natural gas mixed with other biofuels is currently transported.
The Minister for the Ecological Transition has specified this Friday that an infrastructure of this caliber could take between 5 and 7 years to be available.
The philosophy behind this proposal is to advance the European objectives of the single energy market by facilitating interconnection between the different member countries. The Iberian Peninsula has barely 3% electrical connection with the rest of the continent. This argument served to justify the Iberian exception and now serves as the basis for claiming that the European Union assumes the largest part of the budget. The Secretary of State for Energy, Sara Aagesen, has also explained that the Government hopes that the European Union will finance the construction of this corridor in a “forceful” way since it is strategic for Europe and, therefore, susceptible to being included as Project of Common Interest (PIC). The Midcat, lost that condition years ago since both Spain and France considered, then, that it was not an economically profitable investment.
The President of the Spanish Government has called a summit between the three countries involved to publicize the technical bases of the project. It will be next December 9 in Alicante.
France had every reason to be against Midcat. Beyond the economic cost, the opposition of the population of the French south to the ecological and environmental impact of the construction of the Midcat gas pipeline weighed heavily. Of course, there is also an environmental impact of construction across the Mediterranean Sea, “but being less close to the populations, the response may be limited to environmental groups and not so much to the affected neighbors, who will be much less”, explain sources of the energy sector.
Another reason is that with this project, France avoids investing in connections in its southernmost territory and maintains control of energy connections with central Europe, which it would lose if Spain and Italy advanced in their Mediterranean connection.
The Catalan president, Pere Aragonés, spoke yesterday as soon as he heard the news in favor of this infrastructure. He assured that he has the “complicity and support” of the Catalan Government as well as the “willingness to collaborate” with the parties involved so that Catalonia is “a (green) hydrogen energy ‘hub’ in Europe”.
The same has not happened with other renowned projects such as the failed expansion of El Prat Airport or the eternal controversy surrounding the Rodalies service. An example of the good harmony between governments in this matter is that Ribera, as she herself explained, reported the agreement to Aragonés before it was made public, according to what the Efe agency published this Friday.
Not even the Spanish, French and Portuguese stock markets have reacted to this news. Nor has it had an impact on gas prices. “The market is always positive towards greater energy interconnection between European countries, but this project is still very green. It has hardly been announced, details are not known and above all it is very long term. Now, the focus of the energy markets is much more short-term than what is happening now with gas reserves and, above all, how Europe is going to solve the problem of reserves before the winter of 2024”, explains Adría Sánchez, market analyst at Singular Bank.
From Enagas, the Spanish energy infrastructure company, had studied a possible connection between Barcelona and Livorno as an alternative to Midgas. The minister, Teresa Ribera, recognized that Friday that the project would be “more extensive and expensive”, so it is logical to prioritize a more “agile and logical” option such as that of BarMar: “The alternative was that it be Livorno, but it is very reasonable that Marseille is”, he assured.
