Europe doubles efforts to give up Russian gas

Not far from a muddy trench, large stacked black pipes will soon be buried in this land in Denmark, as construction of a gas pipeline connecting Norway and Poland resumed after the invasion of Ukraine.

From liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal projects in northern Germany, Finland or France to potential new routes through Spain or the eastern Mediterranean, Europe is making efforts to free itself of Russian gas, although the task will take years, experts say.

In Middelvart on the Danish island of Funen, work on the Baltic Pipeline resumed last month to complete this nearly 900 kilometer pipeline.

"It's also about having gas in the Danish system, but above all with the help of the gas system of our good neighbors and our Polish friends," Soren Jules Larsen, project manager at Energenet, the Danish operator of energy infrastructure, told AFP.

Barely a week after the invasion of Ukraine, the Danish Environment Agency - which was particularly concerned about the project's impact on local species of mice and bats - granted permission to continue construction nine months after it was suspended.

"We were expecting it to be approved soon, but the war certainly made the issue more urgent," said Trini Velomsen Berlining, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

The project, which passes partially under the sea, was born about twenty years ago and began its implementation in 2018. It is supposed to start operating in October before becoming operational on January 1, 2023.

"We have really good cooperation with all contractors to speed up and do everything we can to stick to the schedule," Jules Larsen said during a site visit.

The gas pipeline, with an annual capacity of ten billion cubic meters of gas, is supposed to secure half the consumption of Poland, which three years ago announced the termination of its extensive contract with the Russian giant Gazprom in 2022.

But this good news for Warsaw could complicate supplies for the rest of Europe.

Norway, the second largest supplier of gas in Europe after Russia, is already producing at full capacity and therefore gas that reaches Poland will no longer be sold in Western Europe.

"This project would help Poland, but it could lead to a reduction in Norwegian gas exports to the UK and Germany," said Zhongqiang Luo, an expert at Rystad Analytics.

At the same time, many long-term contracts between Russia and European suppliers are still valid for 10 to 15 years, he said.

But the EU's executive authority asserts that the bloc can completely dispense with Russian gas "before 2030".

With Norway's speed at which it operates, the Netherlands and Britain declining, and the desire to dispense with Russia, Europe is seeking to obtain its gas from further regions by bringing in transportable liquefied natural gas from the United States, Qatar or Africa.

But importing it requires building large plants or at least buying floating storage units and converting imported LNG into natural gas.

Faced with the abandonment of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia that resumed last winter in Danish waters, Germany has quickly relaunched three projects to install liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, which had not been a priority before.

One of them could be ready in the winter of 2024/2023 and the other two in 2026 at the earliest.

Finland, along with Estonia, announced Thursday a project to lease a ship-port to import gas, while the three Baltic states said they had stopped importing Russian gas as of April 1.

In southern Europe, Spain and Portugal are scrambling for an alternative supply of Russian gas. The port of Sens, the largest port in Portugal, intends to double the capacity of its gas estuary in less than two years.

Spain, which is linked to a gas pipeline with Algeria and has large terminals to receive liquefied natural gas, may be an option. But this requires hard work to improve the network with the rest of the European Union, across France.

Another route was also re-launched, linking Europe to gas in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in large quantities twenty years ago off the coasts of Israel and Cyprus.