France, Spain and Portugal have agreed to develop and build an underwater pipeline which will carry natural gas and hydrogen between Barcelona (eastern Spain) and Marseille (southern France). The new BarMar route will be used to pump green hydrogen and other renewable gases but will also temporarily transport natural gas to help tackle Europe's current energy crisis. The project is expected to take 4 to 5 years to complete.
The BarMar project will substitute itself to the extension plans for the MidCat pipeline (7.5 bcm/year) across the Pyrenees. Spain and Portugal were in favour of the project, while France opposed it, arguing that the pipeline would take too long to build to resolve short-term supply issues.
Spain and Portugal have also agreed to complete a renewable gas pipe which will link Zamora (central Spain) and Celourico da Beira (northern Portugal).
Spain is connected to France through the Lacal gas interconnection (import capacity of 5.2 bcm/year and export of 7 bcm/year) and to Portugal (import capacity of 2.5 bcm/year and export of 4.4 bcm/year). As for power interconnections, Spain is interconnected with France (3.4 GW for import and 3 GW for export as of end-2021) and Portugal (3.9 GW for import and 4.1 GW for export).
In addition, Spain and France have agreed to speed up an electricity interconnection through the Bay of Biscay and identify and work on other connections between the two national grids. Between 17 October 2022 and 16 December 2022, a public enquiry will be conducted in France to test the feasibility of the Spain-France Bay of Biscay interconnection project. The 400 km project, which should be commissioned in 2025, will comprise 4 lines and will have a transmission capacity of 2 GW. It will increase the interconnection capacity between Spain and France to 5 GW.