Algeria and Spain will boost their “strategic” energy partnership at a time when Algiers has been Spain’s leading gas supplier for three years, the Spanish foreign minister said on Thursday.
Beginning a two-day visit and with no end in sight to the Iran war, Jose Manuel Albares called Algeria a “stable, reliable and steady gas supplier” after meeting President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Spain and Algeria are connected by the MedGaz pipeline, which is operating at full capacity but whose capacity could be increased by a billion cubic metres a year, US expert Geoff Porter has told AFP.
Albares said that during Thursday’s talks, “it became clear that Algeria is a strategic friend and partner for Spain”.
Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf’s office hailed relations between both countries, “particularly in the energy sector”.
Albares’ trip comes a day after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited and said Rome and Algiers would work towards “increasing deliveries of Algerian gas”.
Italian energy major ENI and Algeria’s Sonatrach would cooperate on projects including shale gas extraction and offshore exploration, she said at a joint press conference with Tebboune.
Spain’s foreign minister on Thursday also welcomed a “spectacular increase in Spanish exports” to Algeria over the past two years, including a threefold rise in 2025 year-on-year.
The Algerian presidency said Tebboune told Albares of his decision to reactivate a 2002 friendship treaty with Spain.