PARIS — The French government said Wednesday it is re-assessing its opposition to completing the so-called “MidCat” pipeline from the Iberian Peninsula to Northern Europe.
France has repeatedly ruled out the €3 billion gas pipeline project, but faces renewed pressure from Portugal, Spain and Germany, who argue the project can help solve the Continent’s energy supply problems. In the longer term, the Iberian countries also want to use the pipeline to sell their own production of green hydrogen to Northern Europe.
A French official said Wednesday that Paris is holding internal discussions about the project.
The comments follow a meeting between France’s junior Europe minister, Laurence Boone, and Portugal’s Secretary of State for EU Affairs Tiago Antunes in Paris on Tuesday during which the pipeline was discussed.
Speaking to POLITICO after the meeting, Antunes said Boone told him “they are willing, after listening to Portuguese, Spanish and German arguments, to look again into this project with fresh eyes.”
Antunes said he stressed to his French counterpart that there is “a very compelling case” for completing that pipeline, insisting on the fact that it would transport “clean, green hydrogen” in the future.
“There are some technical issues that came about during the meeting so we agreed to have our technical experts meet and try to clear the doubts that still remain,” the minister said.
A second French official on Wednesday confirmed that France is considering the project, but stressed that this was already the case.
“Discussions between France and Spain were never halted. There are questions that are still on the table, we are looking into it,” the official said.
“I don’t know if this means we are considering the project with ‘fresh eyes’ … but the reality is that since the last technical data from 2019, the context has completely changed,” the official added. “There was never a complete closure at our end, and we are considering the situation given the new context.”
While Portugal’s Antunes described the project as a “no-brainer,” the pipeline project has become a headache for the French government.
Macron faces pressure from environmental groups, which oppose the project and say the war in Ukraine should not be used as “a pretext to restart fossil fuel projects.”
But advocates of the pipeline say France’s main concern is to protect its domestic nuclear industry from competition.
In the short term, Paris wants to sell gas from its four LNG terminals to Germany, instead of being merely a transit country for gas from the south, according to EU and French officials. In the longer term, France hopes to sell hydrogen made with nuclear energy, a senior French official told POLITICO.
Critics of France’s stance say blocking the pipeline from being built would effectively shut out the competition from the Iberian Peninsula.
Earlier this month, France’s Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said France was open to discussing hydrogen interconnections with Spain but that, when it comes to gas, the MidCat gas pipeline “unfortunately” won’t strengthen Europe’s energy independence and would undermine France’s green goals.
“This poses a clear problem. We are investing in a fossil infrastructure at the same time as we are organizing the decarbonization of our energy system. There is indeed an inconsistency,” she said.
This article has been updated.
