“Continued Ban On Import of Spanish Ceramics and Earthenware Will Cripple Algerian Gas Exports”

The Chairman of the Employers Organization for Ceramics and earthenware Industry in Spain threatened to drastically curtail Algerian gas exports to Spain because of the lingering Algerian embargo, which is still in force on the import of Spanish ceramics, tiles and earthenware products since last April.

He stressed that the continued imposition of these restrictions means that the decline will affect the exports of Algerian gas to Spain, as Algerian gas as is the first source of energy to rotate the production wheel.

The head of the Spanish Ceramics Employers’ Organization, Mr. Isidro Zarzoso, said in a press statement quoted by “El Peridico di Castellano” that the sector’s officials had told the authorities in Algeria that they were restricting a sector that originally depended on Algerian gas as the first source of energy in its activity.

“Algeria has learned that it is exerting pressure and restrictions on an industrial sector that originally uses Algerian gas as the first source of energy,” the official said. “This is what we have said and repeated to the authorities in this country,” he added.

The Spanish official tried to convey a message by saying that if Algeria continued to ban the import of Spanish tiles, earthenware and ceramics, it would be the first to be affected by the stiff decline in consumption of this Algerian industrial gas sector, which uses it as the first source of energy to rotate the production equipment, as he put it.

In the statement it is clear that the Spanish side has tried to throw the ball into the court of the Algerian authorities, stressing if they continued to impose these restrictions, the revenues from the export of Algerian gas supplies to Spain will also steadily plummet.