445 Million cubic metres of gas

Today's estimated demand is a massive 445 mcm. The linepack is quite a bit higher than normal so that provides a good reserve. Furthermore demand is forecast to fall below 400 mcm by the end of the week. However, this is the sort of challenge we would not have coped with in 2005-7. With the dispute between Russia and Ukraine there are further problems.

Still there are lots of options for demand reduction as it stands.

Cold Weather makes heavy demands on MRS

The Cold Weather is resulting in quite high demand levels (probably because of the need for CCGTs) and also substantial demand on MRS. MRS is being called upon at far too early a stage in terms of increasing demand.

LRS is as to be expected running at full steam, but it can for some time. The government does need warm weather, but we won't be able to make good predictions as to the situation in Jan-Mar until the new year.

Colder weather calls on MRS

The current levels of demand are resulting in a small call on MRS. Demand seems higher (probably as a result of a need for gas for the CCGTs). LRS is now running at top speed as it can until about 21st Feb 2008.

The Interconnector is, however, delivering quite well.

The underlying problem is that we call upon stored gas before calling upon imports. That wouldn't be such a problem if LRS could last about a month longer, but it cannot.

The infrastructure is stronger than in Winter 5/6, but the uncertainty is whether there is sufficient gas given pan-European demand to put into the infrastructure.

Gas issues winter 2007 - 2008

I had expected things to run reasonably smoothly in Winter 2007-8. However, Milford Haven is not on line and we encounter the usual about 24mcm/d of depletion from the North Sea. That actually makes things tighter than last winter.

As usual the system is starting out by taking gas from long term storage. Strategically for the UK that is bad news as we are not using that much gas at the moment and the Rough reserve is more readily available for the UK than gas down Langaled, Vesterled or the Interconnector (where it needs to go in at the other end).

At the rate of depletion currently Rough runs out in late Jan and Medium Range storage is already being used.

MRS being used heavily

Medium Range storage was used quite heavily yesterday and looks like taking a hit today as well. A small amount of SRS is being used as well.

We are likely to have a cold thursday and a cold friday. MRS is quite full and can last some time at peak output. If the SRS demand goes up that can cause some concerns.

24 mcm from MRS

On what wasn't particularly a cold day with consumption of 322 mcm 24 mcm was taken from MRS yesterday. We just have to hope it stays warm.

MRS @ 88%

At the end of Gas Day 23rd Dec (a Saturday) Medium Range Storage was at 88% having taken another 7mcm from MRS.

At this rate MRS would deplete in January.

As expected LRS should be OK except for the fact that it passed through the same capacity constraint at Easington as Langeled (96-98 mcm/d). Bacton I am told has a capacity constraint of 158 mcm/d. I am not sure it is that high from the actions of NG on capacity - see the ANS messages.

After Christmas we will do a review of the flows to find out what is going on. Weather forecasts point towards warmer weather, but the control on GFS is going for a cold end of December.

The recent frosty weather has not been that cold. Demand has been high probably because 2Gw of AGRs are offline. Making an assumption of 50% efficiency (supposed to be 55%), that would be 96 GWh of gas which is only about 9 mcm so it looks as if there are other reasons for the relatively high demand.