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Mild autumn weather [ and not enough storage capacity to take advantage ] has sent European gas prices plummeting. 90% full in the UK means about a week's wort
by pydry 4y ago
Mild autumn weather [ and not enough storage capacity to take advantage ] has sent European gas prices plummeting.
90% full in the UK means about a week's worth of gas. In Germany it's about 2.5 months.
- hef19898 4y agoShort term not to bad for the UK, you can now sign contracts for delivery in one to two weeks at significantly lower prices.
- rowanajmarshall 4y agoAlthough the UK has an appreciable percentage of Europe's LNG re-gasification capacity, while Germany has none, and imports LNG via Belgium and the Netherlands instead. The UK has storage, it's just sitting in ships off the coast.
- blibble 4y agoand a large chunk of UK supply is still domestically produced from the North Sea
- 7952 4y agoAnd the UK has relatively more secure sources in Norway and the North Sea.
- empedocles 4y agoNot sure I would bet on the pipeline from Norway remaining secure. They have increased their level of military alert for a reason.
- teknofobi 4y agoAn attack there is quite high risk, you would have to thread the hybrid warfare needle well to not trigger NATO Article 5.
- Workaccount2 4y agoRussia would be insane (more than they already are) to attack that. It has nothing to do with Ukraine and would likely be considered an attack on a NATO ally. No benefit and lots to lose.
- reitanqild 4y ago(Disclaimer up front: I don't know who cut NS1 and NS2, my bet is on russia, but I can see more than one alternative.) Which would explain the attacks on their own gas pipeline NS1 and NS2: - they are dumb and reckless enough to do that (they weren't used anyway, +plausible deniability) - it signals to NATO the idea that russia can destroy critical infrastructure without actually getting caught for an attack on critical infrastructure
- vkou 4y agoThe cost of betting wrong when you attack your own infrastructure is measured in rubles. The cost of being wrong when you attack NATO infrastructure is measured in war, conventional or nuclear. That's why Russia attacked Ukraine, but only postures and blusters when it comes to NATO. There are red lines that you can't cross, and open conflict with a nuclear adversary is one of the latter.
- hackandthink 4y ago"There are red lines that you can't cross, and open conflict with a nuclear adversary is one of the latter." This is true for NATO powers as well. I can't believe Russia blew it up, it doesn't make sense. But which NATO Country would blow up pipelines and risk a conflict with a nuclear adversary?
- reitanqild 4y ago> I can't believe Russia blew it up, it doesn't make sense. I think lot of what Russia does, doesn’t make sense at the macro scale, only in the context of internal power struggles.
- empedocles 4y agoUnlike oil, LNG boils off while sitting off the coast, so this is not a long term strategy.
- makomk 4y agoArguably it's a better long term strategy - the rest of Europe doesn't really have a way to refill their storage once it's been emptied over winter.
- rowanajmarshall 4y agoI'm not talking about sitting tankers off the coast, I'm talking about the UK's ability to continually attract new LNG tankers thanks to major existing infrastructure, and being able to afford it. The UK is setup to be able to keep a just-in-time LNG delivery system in place; Germany is not.
- fbdab103 4y agoAt what rate? 1% per day/week? If it takes N weeks to criss cross the Atlantic to refill from the US, maybe it is worthwhile to lose X% off the top to sell when possible. I have no doubt the energy companies have teams of analysts crunching the numbers on a daily basis.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoIn UK it is completely self inflicted, because they got rid of gas storage infrastructure in 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-stor...
- moffkalast 4y agoWell it made sense at the time, as it was May.
- sgt101 4y agoThis has reopened (25%) and is excluded from the economist's figures. In fact some research [1] shows that approximately 93 days of supply will be stored in the Rough gas facility at 25% (28Bcf {capacity}/313Mcf {daily}). This is inadequate (of course) and has probably not been filled yet, but should be helpful to the UK if it can be properly commissioned. [1] https://www.costadvice.co.uk/latest-news/will-the-reopening-of-the-rough-gas-storage-facility-secure-our-energy-supplies-heading-into-the-winter https://www.costadvice.co.uk/latest-news/will-the-reopening-...
- petercooper 4y agoAnd yet when the news did the rounds about Rough recently, they kept mentioning a 50% figure. For example: "Centrica has officially reopened the Rough gas storage facility, increasing the UK's storage capacity by 50%." When I saw this, I was thinking an increase of 50% on a week's worth of storage?
- sgt101 4y agoIt looks like some of the figures in the article I cited may be very wrong. Wikipedia says that Rough has 3.3bn cubic meters of storage, so 30Bcf total and says that equated to 9 days of supply. Looking at various other sources there seems to be a lot of confusion about what the consumption and storage figure are. 50% of 9 days is sorta like a week I guess... so that would add up. I think that there is a lot of confusion because of the difference between peak winter demand and normal daily demand. If one is boosting the capability I guess you would quote in terms of normal daily demand. If one was trying to show that it's pointless keeping it open then maybe you would do it in terms of peak demand.