You said in Fraplana that there should be a closer connection between fracking and fighting against Gasistan infrastructures.

It was, above all, a cry that sought to understand the whole gas system. Combating fracking without combating gas infrastructures is like fighting cars without fighting motorways.

Who is behind the big gas projects? Does Europe drive with public money, but are private companies the promoters?

Yes. An important milestone in understanding the whole strategy is the 2006 conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The Russian company Gazprom closed the keys to all the gas pipelines passing through Ukraine and which, above all, supply Eastern Europe, which caused a huge problem in the region. Since then, energy, and in particular gas, have become very important on the European Union’s political agenda. Solutions began to be sought so as not to be dependent on Russian gas.

How?

Under the mandate of Juncker, the form that this strategy, launched in 2006, has taken is the Energy Union. Its main pillars are energy security and the creation of a single energy market; the key to security is to diversify, that is, to obtain new gas sources for European networks. Hence the development of a list of about 250 projects considered to be of common interest. Everyone has the possibility of being subsidized with public money, but the promoters are private companies.

If gas cannot be brought from Russia, where?

There are two roads: the dirt road – that is, gas pipelines – and the sea road. The first consists of the areas of exploitation that have found gas or that are already known and want to strengthen. One of them is the Caucasus area. Hence the most expensive energy infrastructure ever planned by the EU: Southern Gas Corridor (South Gas Pipeline) It will cost $45 billion and a length of 3,500 kilometres between Azerbaijan and Italy. It is precisely in Italy that the resistance movement against the project has begun. Another land route is the increase in existing relations with North Africa.

And what is the maritime strategy?

Supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) Europe currently has a great capacity to convert this LNG into gas, but still more plants would be built for that purpose. It is, of course, necessary to transport LNG to Europe via liquefied plants with the capacity to carry out an inverse process. In this way you can bring gas from Egypt, Qatar… and also from the new exporters: United States, Tanzania…

In the world, there are only about 25 liquefied plants.

Yes, but depending on the intentions on the table, the amount would double more than it would double. These are very unique infrastructures, which are located in few countries of the world and which are very expensive.

He mentioned the new exporters, including the United States. His message is that the gas obtained through fracking has returned energy sovereignty to them, as well as the possibility of becoming exporters. But we know that the fracking bubble has already burst.

Reading is difficult. I, at least, do not understand it from the point of view of price; I thought the Americans would sell LNG in Asia, where gas is more expensive. But liquefaction, transport, conversion and sales in Europe, with the current low price of gas, is incomprehensible. In any case, it should be borne in mind that the internal market for gas in EE.UU., at the level of the 1980s, has suffered a sharp drop in prices; exporting can be a way of balancing that market. On the other hand, export to Europe may have a geopolitical significance: If you supply US gas to European networks, Russian gas is unworthy.

In April I arrived in Europe the first LNG shipment sent from the United States.

Yes. In November 2015, the European Commission already said that good relations must be maintained with countries that have traditionally exported LNG to Europe, but that priority must be given to Algeria, the United States and Canada. In addition, they explicitly stated that TTIP should be a tool to facilitate import.

Can the increase in imports halt European gas extraction projects by fracking?

I don't think so. The exploitation of local resources will always be on the table. In case you have to deal with any market fluctuation, producing tomatoes at home will always be cheaper... Another thing is what I think of fracking: as I said earlier, the price of gas is very low and it is not profitable. These are speculative exercises focused on profits in the short and medium term. The first to install well in that market is the one who earns the money. Otherwise it is not understood that there are so many projects to build liquefied plants. In any case, not everyone will be able to survive.

Gas is said to be a transitional fuel that serves to replace coal and oil on the road to a renewable future. I do not know whether there is so much investment in infrastructure that can be justified from that point of view.

It is clear that gas prevents investment in other options, including renewables. This is promoted by the big oil companies. Part of the renewables sector has been done with the aim of spreading this message in favour of gas. When talking about climate change, they always say – and it is true – that burning gas generates fewer emissions than smoking coal or oil, but the whole process must be taken into account, including possible methane emissions. Methane has much more global warming capacity than CO2.