Oil and gas pipelines
🛢️ Oil and gas pipelines
The petrol and diesel sold in Spain do not mainly travel by lorry: they leave refineries and ports through a network of some 4,000 kilometres of pipelines now operated by Exolum (formerly CLH, Compañía Logística de Hidrocarburos). Natural gas arrives by pipeline from Algeria and France, or liquefied by ship at the regasification plants on the coast.
Map of oil pipelines
Routes from OpenStreetMap, drawn by volunteers: they cover some 3,943 km of the roughly 4,000 that Exolum reports, so some sections are missing. The network links the refineries (Cartagena, Puertollano, Tarragona, Castellón, Huelva, Algeciras, Bilbao, A Coruña) and the ports with the large inland storage depots. Nobody publishes how much fuel goes through each section.
How much the network moves
Data from the CNMC's annual supervision reports on Exolum. "Primary" transport: from refineries and ports to the depots. Outflows include petrol, diesel and jet fuel, which then leave by tanker lorry for petrol stations, airports and customers.
Gas pipelines and regasification plants
Line width by capacity, where Global Energy Monitor knows it (the international pipelines); the rest of Enagás's trunk network is drawn with a thin line. Medgaz brings gas from Algeria to Almería; the Maghreb pipeline, through Morocco to Tarifa, has been shut since November 2021.
Where the gas comes from
Algeria has always been the main supplier. Russia and the United States, which send liquefied gas by ship, gained weight after the Maghreb pipeline was closed in 2021. Source: Eurostat.
Sources and notes
- Oil pipeline routes: OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence), ways tagged as oil or petroleum product pipelines, downloaded with the Overpass API. Exolum does not publish the layout of its network or the traffic per section.
- National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), annual supervision reports on Exolum's activity: outflows from the depots and the split of transport between pipeline, ship and lorry.
- Global Energy Monitor, Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker (CC BY 4.0 licence): gas pipelines with status, year and capacity, and liquefied natural gas terminals.
- Eurostat, natural gas imports by country of origin (nrg_ti_gas), in millions of cubic metres; per inhabitant with the INE municipal register.
Data updated 7 minutes ago