Spanish and German leaders discuss alternatives to Russian gas

OVIEDO, Spain

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Germany on Tuesday to discuss national security and ways to cope with the EU’s looming energy crisis.

“Spain is willing to use all of its capacities to help countries like Germany, which are suffering more from Putin’s energy blackmail,” Sanchez told a joint press conference in Berlin, emphasizing that Spain is home to 30% of all Europe’s liquid natural gas (LNG) regasification capacity.

Both Sanchez and Scholz agreed on the need to connect the Iberian Peninsula’s largely isolated gas infrastructure with the rest of the EU.

Indirectly, this agreement puts pressure on France to reconsider its pessimistic view of the Midcat pipeline that would connect it with Spain through the Pyrenees mountains.

Spanish officials argue that the pipeline could be built in a year, while French authorities have said it would take much longer than that.

As a “Plan B,” Sanchez added that Spain is considering a pipeline with Italy to “remove the bottlenecks.”

Meanwhile, Scholz sent a calm note about Germany’s ability to cope with Russia cutting off natural gas supplies.

Gazprom is set to suspend gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline due to "maintenance" on Wednesday for three days, sparking concerns that the shutdown could be more permanent.

“You can’t say ‘we’re through with our problems,’ but you can say we are much more relaxed about the situation,” said Scholz, referring to gas reserves that are around 83% full and the rapid set up of new LNG terminals.

“We are also firmly convinced that the current price formations on the electricity exchanges do not reflect the real situation,” he said.

On Monday, German power prices for next year broke the €1,000 ($999.80) per megawatt hour threshold for the first time.

Now that Germany has more or less secured energy supply for the winter, the German chancellor said: “We can now look to the question of how we can prevent exaggerated pricing.”

During the joint presser, Sanchez also shared how Spain is moving to tax windfall profits of the energy companies benefiting from high electricity prices.