Gas alert as demand and prices rise

[mikepepler]

Bacton still not sending any gas to the UK, so that's nearly 2 hours. Each hour is 3mcm missing from today's gas supply, and that will have to come out of storage instead, unless imports can be dramatically increased when Bacton starts importing again...

Flows from LRS were started soon after 8am, and have ramped up to 10mcm/day so far.

View the graphs here: http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Gas/Data/efd/ezgraph.htm

[adam2]

In the last few minutes, gas supplies from the Shell terminal at Bacton have dropped sharply and will probably cease shortly (pink line on the graph above)
This is a smaller flow and therefore less important, but still not a good sign.
Spot price 90 pence a therm, and the more representative 7 day average remains over 80 pence.

[mikepepler]

In the last few minutes, gas supplies from the Shell terminal at Bacton have dropped sharply and will probably cease shortly (pink line on the graph above)
This is a smaller flow and therefore less important, but still not a good sign.
Spot price 90 pence a therm, and the more representative 7 day average remains over 80 pence.

Yes, I saw that too. It's frustrating there's no info on what's happening at Bacton, i.e. is it just exporting (unlikely I think) or is there a technical problem?

[mikepepler]

A ha! Some news!
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/2 ... 7J20130322

Britain's wholesale gas prices surged to a record high on Friday, after one of its three gas import pipelines shut down unexpectedly.

The operator of the UK-Belgium Interconnector pipeline said a technical problem had forced the shutdown, without giving more details.

If the pipeline remains shut for a number of days, Britain's grid operator will be forced to trigger all emergency supply options, including reducing demand from contracted users, which will cause an even higher price spike, traders said.

[adam2]

The smaller flow to which I reffered (pink line on graph) restarted after a few minutes.
The larger flow (dark blue line) is still shut down, reason is a technical problem, see link in previous post.

[clv101]

The msm seem to have noticed
The Guardian talks of April the 8th
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013 ... t-supplies
While the Mail shouts about 36 hours
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ng-up.html

That Daily Mail article is hopeless, almost every 'fact' is either wrong or misrepresented!

[PowerSwitchJames]

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this is some kind of political power games going on by energy companies trying to send a message?

[Little John]

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this is some kind of political power games going on by energy companies trying to send a message?

I think there may well be all kinds of power games being played high up the food chain at the moment. Things are getting tight on a number of fronts and those at the top are beginning to squabble. Which is usually very bad news for us plebs down below because it often ends up with us having to go and spill our guts (or someone else's guts) somewhere.

[PS_RalphW]

Long range storage now running at 38 mcm, close to maximum. medium has not been touched much. A second LNG flow has come on line, about 8 mcm. Bacton flow has restarted at low levels in the last few minutes, must be testing before full restart.

[adam2]

Gas supply situation now making it to front page of BBC news site.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21897715

[PowerSwitchJames]

And now Sellafield is being shut down.

Something weird is going on.

[biffvernon]

Fancy that, a pump breaking just on the day it was most needed.

Gas prices for within-day delivery spiked at 150 pence per therm, more than 50 percent above Thursday's closing price, following the closure of the pipeline linking Britain and Belgium that facilitates gas imports from Europe.

A water pump failure forced the shutdown of the UK-Belgium Interconnector gas pipeline at around 0700 GMT on Friday, the operator said, adding the line was unlikely to restart before late afternoon on Friday.

"Due to the failure of a water/glycol pump in the Bacton boiler house we are currently unable to flow gas. We are working to resolve the issue," Interconnector said in a market message published on Friday morning.

If the pipeline remains shut for a number of days, Britain's grid operator will be forced to trigger all emergency supply options, including reducing demand from contracted users, which will cause an even higher price spike, traders said.

Britain's National Grid said it was monitoring the situation.

"I don't think the price has ever been higher. It's certainly super spike territory," said a gas trader at a utility. "The worrying thing is it can probably go higher."

The Interconnector is one of Britain's main gas import pipelines and on Wednesday set a new record exporting 783 gigawatt-hours of gas from Belgium to Britain.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/2 ... 7J20130322

[biffvernon]

And now Sellafield is being shut down.

Something weird is going on.

Seems it's just because it's snowing - but that is weird - they do get snow in Cumbria!

In response to the current and predicted adverse weather conditions on and round the Sellafield site, as a precaution, a Site Incident has been declared and the plants have been moved safely to a controlled, shut down state.

The site emergency control centre has been established and is managing the incident in line with well rehearsed procedures.

We have implemented a phased, early release of staff from the site; this is being carried out in a safe, controlled manner.

There is no reason to believe that there will be any off-site nuclear, environmental or conventional safety issues associated with the incident.

The priority for the team is to protect our workforce, the community and the environment.

Although a phased early release of employees from the site is underway we require on coming shift workers to continue to report to work to relieve their colleagues if it is safe for them to do so. Please be aware that the A595 is closed south of Calderbridge.

Please note that site is only accessible from North Gate.

http://www.in-cumbria.com/snow-forces-c ... ws-archive

[adam2]

Import flows of gas now nearly back to normal.
Under normal circumstances the "loss" of a few hours imports via one pipeline would be of no consequence, things break or are shutdown for maintenance, and normally no one much cares.

At present though with the supply and stock situation so tight, even a brief shutdown is cause for concern.

[clv101]

We lost about 6 hours of ~70 mcm/d, so around 18 mcm or around 200 GWh. Our total remaining storage is around 5000 GWh, so even this 6hr outage will have taken a non trivial 4% bite out of our already very tight storage.