Iberian gas pipeline could cost Portugal and Spain €350M

  • ECO News
  • 19 August 2022

The gas pipeline linking Portugal and Spain to Europe, via France, may cost up to €350 million. According to Expresso newspaper, the work may be completed in two and a half years.

The gas pipeline that connects the Iberian Peninsula to Europe, via France, is expected to cost between €300 and €350 million. The Portuguese section may have a length of 160 kilometres, between Celorico da Beira and Vale de Frades, and a total price of €150 million.

The details, advanced this Friday by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Action to the Expresso newspaper, emerge after the French government once again rejected the project proposed by Portugal and Spain, at a time when the European bloc lives between the promise to free itself of Russian gas and Moscow’s threat to shut off supply through Nord Stream 1 at any moment.

The construction time could take two and a half years, after “obtaining environmental licensing and making the final investment decision,” the government told the newspaper. The estimate put forward by the Ministry is higher than the one given by Spain’s Energy Transition Minister Teresa Ribera who, last week, suggested that the work could take up to nine months if France agreed to do so. Meanwhile, France’s Ministry of Energy Transition claimed that a project of such magnitude would require “several years” to be completed.