French Regulator Snubs MidCat
French energy regulator CRE has publicly poured cold water over the proposed MidCat pipeline between northeast Spain and southern France.
Industry sources told NGE two months ago that Midcat, a 7.4bn m3/yr capacity project, would be unlikely to be built before 2021-22, despite calls from EU energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete last October for it to be completed by 2020.
CRE said June 15: “The Midcat Project … will cost almost €3bn, €2bn of which is being funded by France, and the decision to launch it should not be taken lightly without robust cost-benefit analyses. These studies must, in particular, identify and quantify the benefits for each country concerned as well as for the EU, and organise the project funding in relation to these benefits."
The regulator said it had to protect French consumers from “being exposed to considerable costs to build infrastructure facilities whose advantages for developing the European market and security of supply have not been demonstrated.”
In the event of any piped gas supply cut-off, continued CRE, current regasification capacities in Europe and pipeline connections between Spain and France already seem sufficient to handle the expected volumes of LNG available from the world market.
This graphic from this week's CRE report shows that physical flows through the existing Euskadour pipe, opened ten years ago between Spain and France, have only ever been one way since Jan.2012 - and that way has been from France into Spain, with no gas physically flowed from south to north (Graphic credit: CRE report on interconnections, June 2016)
CRE's report on interconnections, published June 15, said that, if built, Midcat’s north-to-south flow could be interrupted in the event of high utilisation of the Barcelona LNG import terminal, and conversely south-to-north flow could be constrained if sendout from Fos LNG terminals were too high.
Its report said there were more compelling reasons to invest in improving cross-border France-Germany pipeline capacity over the next six years. The main gas transmission system operator in France, GRTgaz, is already engaged in a major programme to upgrade north-to-south flow capacity inside France and has recently with Fluxys opened up increased capacity to/from Belgium.
Mark Smedley