Latest Greenpeace Spain’s investigation unveils how the gas industry – together with complicit governments – has hood-winked the Spanish administration, and many others across Europe, into allowing a massive hike in building and re-opening fossil gas infrastructure on the basis of unsubstantiated claims.
“El Musel in Spain is yet another example of how gas operators are using Europe’s political fear of a threat to gas supplies caused by war in Ukraine to espouse the need for ‘energy security’, and tout gas as the solution. Across Europe, the gas industry has rapidly developed new fossil gas proposals and resurrected old ones.”
“The reality is that gas operators have been using the energy crisis to add infrastructure to their own portfolio and shore up profits and shareholder payouts, whilst locking Europe into decades of gas dependency.”
© Pedro Armestre/ Greenpeace
- Europe has no need for more gas as there is an is an over-capacity and demand is falling;
- Spain has more gas than it needs and cannot satisfy “Europe’s future gas demand”, as the country only has two low volume pipelines connecting to France (two others go to Portugal);
- Many EU countries are building their own regasification facilities and don’t need Spain’s supply of liquified gas from the US;
- The new contracts lock Spanish tax-payers into fossil gas until 2042 because the investments are paid for by the State, not the companies, that is by Spanish tax-payers;
- “Helping to phase out Russian gas imports” is a false claim: Spain is currently the largest EU importer of Russian liquified gas, thus keeping the Russian war coffers filled with fossil fuel profits.
