The diplomatic crisis continues between Algeria and Spain, which stopped trade between the two countries, but despite this, Algeria has regained its position as a major supplier of gas to Spain, displacing the United States of America.
According to a statistical bulletin of the Spanish company “Enganes”, which oversees the sector, Algeria has transported 29,312 gigawatt hours via the pipeline since the beginning of 2023. It also delivered 4,878 gigawatt hours of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by LNG carriers.
The Observe Algeria newspaper reported that Algeria provided 24.2 percent of Spain’s gas needs, and is ahead of the United States and Russia in Madrid’s list of gas suppliers.
The newspaper pointed out that the Corporation for Strategic Reserves of Petroleum Products (CORES), an organization affiliated to the Spanish Ministry of Environmental Transformation, revealed in turn that the Algerian company Sonatrach had reactivated shipping LNG tankers to Spain.
In April, Algeria sent the largest shipment, amounting to 31 percent of the total Algerian gas to Spain, via these tankers within 16 months.
And Spanish media said that the shipment came months after the gas transport through LNG tankers stopped.
The United States of America had become the main supplier of Spanish gas during the month of March, before Algeria regained its position after the increase in its export capacity, according to the newspaper.
And last year, relations between the two countries were strained, as Algeria suspended a cooperation agreement with Spain after Madrid decided to support a proposal to Morocco that provides for granting autonomy to the Western Sahara region, in a situation that constituted a shift in Spanish foreign policy in this file, in which it had been neutral for decades.
Commercial exchanges between the two countries stopped as a result of the crisis, and the only exception was gas, which continued to be delivered to Spain in recent months, at a price raised by the Algerian Sonatrach some time ago.
It is noteworthy that European governments decided to open up to Algeria as part of their efforts to find alternatives to Russian gas since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, which led to a rise in prices, and Italy was a pioneer in that.
