Repsol's president announced today that the Spanish multinational will start drilling and prospecting for natural gas off the Algarve next year.
"There are good gas reservoirs in the Algarve, which are close to those that the company is already exploring, and we want Portugal, if gas is discovered, to have reserves in the Algarve," said Antonio Brufau, after an audience in Belém with the President of the Republic Cavaco Silva.
Repsol's president added: “We want to move forward with exploration in the Algarve and we have suitable partners. We are with Partex, but we want one more local partner. If there is gas in the Algarve, we would have to build the infrastructure and have a pipeline to Sines».
“We are very satisfied with the way operations are proceeding. By the way, [also] in Spain, a country that is clearly growing, we are seeing that in terms of business, the crisis has made us more and more efficient», he stressed.
Antonio Brufau held an audience this Wednesday with the President of the Republic to make him aware of Repsol's projects in Portugal, namely gas exploration off the Algarve, marketing and development of the LPG (gas from liquefied petroleum).
The manager revealed that “in the Sines petrochemical complex, we are gaining efficiency, working with more efficient raw materials. We used to work with naphtha, we are now using propane and we have projects to use ethane, which will allow us to regain competitiveness».
Brufau stressed that the Iberian Peninsula has “the best gas and electricity infrastructure in Europe, with seven factories [gas producing] out of a total of 11, which are seven doors to the world”, defending that Europe “should not depend on , almost exclusively, from Russian gas supplies'.
In this sense, he pointed out that, "in the interconnection of gas from the Iberian Peninsula with Europe, the one who benefits most is Europe, neither Spain nor Portugal, because they already have everything, with the gas pipelines that link them to Algeria."
“Not taking into account the Iberian Peninsula, when there is a crisis in Ukraine and a single supplier, no matter how secure, it seems to me a certain irresponsibility. The proper direction involves a common energy policy in the European Union”, in addition to supply through the Iberian Peninsula, concluded the Repsol president in his final statements to journalists.
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