Medgaz and the new Mediterranean gas map

For two decades, the Medgaz pipeline was a quiet piece of infrastructure — a direct line from Beni Saf on Algeria's coast to Almería in southern Spain. After 2022, it became something else entirely: a barometer of Europe's scramble to replace Russian gas.

01 —A corridor rediscovered

Algeria is now the leading pipeline-gas supplier to Spain and among the top suppliers to Italy. That position was not built overnight; it rests on a network of routes — Medgaz, Transmed, and the Maghreb–Europe line — each with its own politics and constraints.

The expansion of Medgaz to roughly ten billion cubic metres a year gave Spain optionality at a moment when optionality was scarce. But pipelines are rigid instruments: they bind buyer and seller together for decades, and they concentrate risk along a single seabed.

02 —What comes next

• Reinforcement of existing routes rather than wholly new megaprojects
• A gradual pivot from volume to value as hydrogen enters the conversation
• Closer coordination between Algiers, Madrid and Rome on security of supply

The Mediterranean gas map is being redrawn not with new lines, but with new meaning attached to the old ones.