The president of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, has defended this Friday that the current energy strategy of the European Union “is completely wrong,” during his address at the Jornada dels Economistes organized by the Col·legi d'Economistes de Catalunya.
Brufau has reproached that Brussels has shaped its energy policy almost exclusively around decarbonization per unit of energy and “has forgotten” two pillars that he considers essential: supply security and the real cost of that energy for the European economy.
As an example, he has recalled that “fracking” is banned in community territory, while the natural gas that the United States has sent massively to Europe after the closure of the Russian market comes precisely from this extraction technique.
As he has pointed out, this dependence on imports increases emissions linked to transporting gas, despite it being an energy resource that Europe “has, but has prohibited.”
In this context, he has asked out loud: “Does this make sense? Does this make sense? At some point we will have to start thinking about whether this is taking us in the right direction,” he has emphasized, the top executive of Repsol.
In addition, he has questioned that the reduction in emissions in Europe has been achieved in part by shifting energy-intensive industry to China, a country which, he has specified, concentrates around 30% of global contaminating emissions.
He has also pointed out that “Europe has become the market for the Chinese” and has emphasized that a large part of the products from China that Europeans consume is manufactured using coal as the main energy source.
Catalunya against competition from Madrid
At the territorial level, Brufau has defended that Catalunya “has all the attributes to succeed” economically, even with the competitive pressure that, in his view, Madrid exerts within the entire State.
He has said that Madrid “has been lucky” to concentrate the large corporations, be the central node of the infrastructures, and host the main regulatory authorities, which, as he has indicated, gives it a position of advantage.
“We are competing in an adverse territory,” he has underlined, insisting that it is key to identify what differential advantages Catalunya can offer to attract new investment.
He has highlighted that Catalonia enjoys legal certainty and a financial structure in the short and medium term that makes it possible to foresee sufficient resources to sustain public services, although he has warned that the fiscal framework is not appropriate: "In Catalonia it is more burdensome than in other places in Spain."
Likewise, he has defended the need to improve both the financing of Catalonia and its transport infrastructures, citing the expansion of Barcelona Airport, the modernization of the road and rail network, and the effective connection of the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona with the Mediterranean Corridor as priority actions.