Spain, France, Portugal scrap MidCat gas pipeline for green energy corridor

Spain, France and Portugal have ditched plans for the MidCat gas pipeline across the Pyrenees in favour of building a “green energy corridor” to transport hydrogen and renewable gases from the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of Europe, the three governments said on Thursday.

The MidCat interconnector between Spain and France, which the French were against, will be replaced with BarMar, a maritime pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille.

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The three-way energy agreement also includes a plan to build a renewable gas interconnection between Celorico da Beira, Portugal and Zamora, Spain, which will become the CelZa line.

Both CelZa and BarMar would pipe hydrogen, but would be “technically adapted to transport other renewable gases, as well as a limited proportion of natural gas as a temporary and transitional source of energy,” according to a joint statement released following Thursday’s meeting between Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, Portuguese prime minister Antonio Costa and French president Emmanuel Macron.

Spain and France would further work to finalise their power interconnection through the Bay of Biscay, and identify new opportunities to exchange electricity between the two nations.

Macron, Sanchez and Costa agreed to meet again in Alicante, Spain, on December 9 to decide on the timeline and how the BarMar portion of the corridor would be financed.