• Spain is the fifth largest energy consumer in Europe and has virtually no domestic production of liquid fuels or natural gas. Government regulation limits the percent of total oil and gas imports any single country may sell to Spain to ensure diversity of supply.
• Liquid fuels are still the largest source of Spain's total energy consumption, mostly in the transportation sector. The country has nine refineries with a total crude oil refining capacity of almost 1.3 million barrels per day, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. However, Spain is still a net importer of petroleum products.
• Up until the 2008 financial crisis, Spain was one of the fastest-growing natural gas markets in Europe. Although growth has slowed since then, Spain was the third-largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world after Japan and South Korea in 2011, according to PFC Energy. Spain has six active LNG regasification terminals to process imports, with a seventh scheduled to come on line in 2013. Spain also receives significant natural gas supplies from Algeria through the undersea Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline, which came on line in 2011 after a number of delays.
• Spain generates a significant amount of power from wind energy, the second most in Europe behind Germany. The Spanish government authorized offshore electricity generating facilities in 2007 to promote the development of offshore wind energy.
• Up until the 2008 recession, Spain was slowly phasing out its coal production subsidies. However, coal production and consumption increased in 2011 after the Spanish government introduced domestic coal production subsidies and gave preferential access to the wholesale power market to coal-powered generators. This has caused electricity producers to substitute away from renewables to coal.
• There are eight operating nuclear reactors in Spain, which supplied about 20 percent of the country's electricity generation in 2011.

Analysis Last Updated: March 2013