Is the gas distribution network across Europe shared among all EU countries? Meaning, can gas be sent from Germany to Spain or vice versa?

3 comments

1. Not so easily. Spain is not well connected with pipelines to the rest of Europe.

   Maybe LNG tankers that were meant to go to Spain could be redirected to go to Belgium or the Netherlands and then supply the central European network, but I’m not sure how well this would work in practice.

2. Here a map of the pipelines in Europe.

   https://memgraph.com/blog/gas-pipelines-in-europe

3. There is a rather extensive interconnected network that spans most of Central Europe, the farther west you get the less relevant natural gas gets and the less pipelines there are. There essentially are 5 major pipelines that supply Central Europe, one coming from Norway then you have the three that come from Russia (Northstream, the Belarussian one and another one through Ukraine) and the last one goes through Turkey towards Italy.

   The Gas crisis is mainly a problem.for those Central European countries that since the 70ties have successively switched to Russian natural gas, either as part of the Soviet Block or in case of Germany and Austria through trade. Russians (Soviets) back then had no currency that they could pay for western goods so they started paying with natural gas.