Repsol's CEO, Josu Jon Imaz, contributed yesterday to animating the intense debate within the European Union about completely breaking ties with Russian gas. Specifically, the highest representative of the energy company showed his concern about what could happen next winter and warned of Europe's dependence. "Today the 150 bcm of gas that Europe receives from Russia cannot be replaced." And he added that "there is no way to cover practically 40% of that gas" in Europe and that is going to cause "brutal tension."

Repsol's CEO, in his criticism of Spain, made reference to the way in which the energy transition has been approached, since without questioning it he has pointed out that it is not being managed "intelligently".

For this reason, Imaz has opted to "rethink" the current energy transition by subtracting it from ideology since, in his opinion, there is a risk of "negatively impacting the industry, energy costs and consumers". In any case, Imaz has reaffirmed that the decarbonization process must be ambitious.

For Imaz, oil will continue to be necessary "for a long time" and has justified it in "the greater use of plastic in many applications." Which, in his opinion, is also going to happen with gas and, for this reason, he has called for an energy transition that guarantees adequate production prices. Otherwise, the senior executive has warned against a problem of competitiveness and supply. Repsol's CEO has lamented, for example, that the Climate Change Law prohibits natural gas exploration and research. "Then we are scandalized by the price of gas, if we are prohibiting exploration, if we have to import it from the US... Industrially we are damaging the competitiveness of our industry and we are increasing dependence on third parties," he concluded.

The words that Imaz pronounced this Wednesday have had a response from the Executive through the mouth of the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs Nadia Calviño, who has assured today that "there is a guarantee of supply." The minister recalled that there are "long-term" contracts signed and pointed out that the Executive's main concern is in the evolution of energy prices "which is greatly affected by any type of supply cut, increase in demand or supply cut at the international level.

In this regard, he assured that the Government is adopting a whole series of measures to alleviate the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on economic growth and employment.

Coincidence or not, this Thursday the Russian gas company Gazprom announced that it will stop using the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, key in transporting Russian gas to Germany through Belarus and Poland. The pipeline is owned by the EuRoPol GAZ group in its Polish part. From Gazprom has indicated that it is a response to the sanctions imposed by Western countries for the invasion of Ukraine. All this happens after Russia announced retaliatory measures against more than 30 companies from the European Union, the United States and Singapore.

In addition, Gazprom attacked what happened with the gas pipeline, since it believes that its rights as a shareholder are being violated. Especially, the payment of dividends.