The third vice president and minister for ecological transition and demographic challenge, Sara Aagesen, has confirmed on Tuesday in the Senate that during the dismantling phase of the failed underwater warehouse of Gas Castor is going to sell what can recover from the project to try to “reduce the losses” of this infrastructure, closed more than a decade ago after a succession of earthquakes after the first gas injections at the end of 2013.
“We are going to bet on the circular economy, that is, evaluate which of the equipment can be reused and can be sold to optimize and reduce the losses of said project,” said Aagesen, which has not specified what the total dismantling cost will be, estimated years ago in about 260 million euros.
Asked by ERC Jordi Gaseni senator about the calendar and the actions that the Government will carry out for the dismantling of all maritime and terrestrial infrastructure of the complex, as well as the total cost that will mean for the State, Aagesen has explained that “this same semester”, in coordination with Enagás, in charge of the dismantling, “we are going to audit each one of the expenses to ensure the principles of efficiency and legality ”.
“All data will be published and public in the process and all accounts will be certified.” In April, substantive authorization will be granted to start the sealing of the 13 storage wells, which is expected to end at the end of this year. After that phase, the infrastructure will be dismantled and what can be reuse will be sold.
Keeping the castor’s facilities off the coast of the Ebro Delta, has cost more than 100 million since the end of 2014, when the Concessionaire Escal Ugs – a controlled company by ACS – renounced the project.
Intended to become scrap, the beaver appears among the “legislative errors” that collected a report published last week by Airef (Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority) of which it follows that the energy sector concentrates more than half of the compensation against the state of recent years.
Promoted by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in October 2014, the Executive of Mariano Rajoy, with José Manuel Soria as Minister of Industry, approved an express compensation of 1,350 million for the promoter of the warehouse, the ACS construction company. The Royal Decree-Law that approved this compensation (to pay for 30 years on the gas bill) was declared unconstitutional in December 2017, which led to the payments to be paralyzed to the financial entities that had advanced the money. And the State ended up borrowing by decree to compensate the bank.
The Castor project was justified by the need to boost gas storage in Spain, which does not produce this hydrocarbon, in forecast of possible suppliers such as Russia. The energy crisis derived from the invasion of Ukraine, the most serious in half a century, showed that the warehouse was not necessary, thanks to the regasifying network of Spain, the largest in Europe.
But, on paper, and in the messages that were launched from companies such as Enagás, the gas system operator seemed like a good idea. The project already appeared in the energy planning that the government of José María Aznar developed in 2002, but it was not a priority “given the immaturity” of the previous studies. The definitive support came in March 2006. With the socialist José Montilla in front of Industry, the 2005-2011 energy planning identified as “urgent” five underground storage, including Castor, qualified as “necessary and priority project for the Spanish gas system”.
The submarine silo was endorsed by the recommendations of the extinct National Energy Commission (CNE) and Enagás. Then, the demand was triggered by the high use of the combined cycle plants (which burn gas to produce electricity) and Spain only had two underground storage, seagull (in front of the coast of Bilbao) and Serrablo (Huesca). Castor should be able to keep a third of the demand for 50 days. With the subsequent crisis and the collapse of the electrical demand, when its construction ended (mid -2012) the gas infrastructure worked at 50% of its capacity.
The submarine warehouse is located about 1,700 meters deep, 21.6 kilometers from the coast, in front of Vinarós (Castellón), in the Baix Masterrat region, very close to the Montsià region (Tarragona). It was designed taking advantage of the natural sealing that provided the limestone terrain of the old deposit of the Amposta failure, in which Shell extracted between 1975 and 1989 about 56 million barrels of oil.
With a capacity of about 1.9 BCM (billions of cubic meters), it consists of a marine platform, a gas pipeline of 30.3 kilometers in length and a land plant in Vinarós baptized with the name of Ignacio Pérez, as the former president of ACS Industrial Services and Energy, who died in 2007 and brother of the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez.
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