In the past two decades, Spain has passed a series of laws aimed at achieving full liberalisation of the energy sector. This was a real challenge because, until very recently, Europe’s energy sector was dominated by the idea of public service, heavily regulated and tightly controlled by strong, state-owned, monopolies. This was particularly so in Spain, where until the mid-1990s, the whole energy sector – oil, gas and electric power – used to be a dominated by either legal or de facto oligopolies.
But despite the best efforts of the Government, it is not entirely clear that a real free market has been achieved. Nowhere is this process better demonstrated than in the oil and gas sectors.
