When the ship is on fire, it isn’t time to start painting it, or so the saying goes. This would seem to be true in regard to the world of construction, at least when it comes to building new pipelines that could help spread the energy better. All that stands between the go ahead of the MidCat project, is French President Emmanuel Macron, while Germany’s Olaf Scholz seems not to worry about it and sees the project moving along, soon.
Time for Cooperation
Europe is not at war. That is what the various governments of the zone keep telling everyone, including each other, it would seem. But they did make decisions, all-together, that bide them for the near future, in terms of energy consumptions. The problems that they face may not yet be as dire as the ones in the UK, but if they do not come together rapidly, all EU countries could also suffer terribly, in the months to come. Yet, if you live North of the English Channel, you still may prefer to move your house from UK to Germany, as you watch the economy crumble down in your own country. After all, with the Brexit, the UK now stands alone, in the face of these new difficulties, while European countries fight together, looking for short and long-term solutions.
The MidCat Project: A Mid-term solution?
First, we need to remind our readers that the project was already put on hold by France. It consists of creating a new pipeline that would wind through the Pyrénées Mountains, in the South. There are already two pipelines in the North, between Spain and France. The French President is concerned with ecological issues of having construction sites in this region, in order to install the pipeline, and he keeps repeating that it would take too long anyway, so that it would not solve the current problems that are arriving, like a storm. He also insists that the future is not about importing gas from third countries but creating green hydrogen infrastructures.
On the other hand, Olaf Scholz, Chancellor from Germany, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, are insisting that this is the perfect solution to an existing problem. They repeated their vision of the situation, after a Spain-German summit not long ago in A Coruña. They even went a step farther, saying that there is no reason that it could not be turned into a pipeline for green hydrogen, in the years to come. One way or another, they both implied that they would not stop pushing this agenda with their other European partners, in search of solutions to this gigantic energy crisis, that Europe is now facing.
Building New Pipelines: The German Solution
Whether France agrees or not, the creation of new pipelines seems to be the solution that Germany prefers, in the short term. Ever since the start of the Ukraine war, Olaf Scholz has been looking into the possibility of building new LNG pipeline (liquefied natural gas), to create some sort of independence from Russia. Let’s see if its allies will align with him, or not.