On Monday 6 February, a workshop took place on the question of energy autonomy, security and diversification of the EU’s gas supply. It was organised by the European Parliament’s industry, research and energy committee and highlighted the need to improve the situation in Europe through new gas infrastructure, particularly in the area of LNG.
The director-general of the European Network of Transmissions System Operators for Gas (ENTSO-G), Jan Ingwersen, said “The situation is improving, even in the most vulnerable regions”. He also provided assurances that “There are more zones where it is necessary to strengthen infrastructure but as a whole, we are progressing well”. He explained that the majority of investment focused on Central and Eastern Europe and that in the future there would be less investment in western Europe.
He added that the gas infrastructure network is “particularly robust” and the LNG terminals and storage capacity are “fully used”. He highlighted ENTSO-G’s efforts to elaborate network codes to ensure uninterrupted cross-border flows.
Katja Yafimava, a researcher at the Oxford Institute Energy Studies, said that they needed to make further progress by implementing the provisions from the third package (for the liberalisation of the internal energy market, Ed).
Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg) welcomed the inversed gas flows as “one of the best European investments” and also welcomed the creation of a LNG terminal in Lithuania that helps to break the monopoly of Russian gas companies in the Baltic countries.
The Vice President of the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and president of the Croatian regulatory authority, Tomislav Jurekovic, highlighted the fact that LNG was a significant source in terms of diversification of supply and called for more information and transparency to be guaranteed on the market. Mr Jurekovic called for action to reabsorb the regulatory shortcomings affectingly LNG terminals.
Ms Coby Van der Linde, director of the Clingendael International Energy Program stressed that “We need to believe in the internal market”. She also said that they also had a tendency to reduce everything to a question of geopolitics. She added that, “The European gas market will be well supplied until 2023-2024. There is no supply problem. The question involves the security of supply beyond then. We have already done a lot to have interconnections and inverse flows”.
In reply to a question from Cypriot MEP, Neoklis Sylikiotis (GUE/NGL), regarding the role of Eastern Mediterranean gas reserves helping energy security, particularly off the Cypriot coast, Ms Yafimava admitted that these were important but pointed out that the challenge involved building infrastructure for transporting this gas to the mainland. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)