The boss of British Gas’s owner has warned the UK faces fuel shortages this winter as stockpiles fall to just 30% owing to an over-reliance on imports. The Telegraph has more.
Chris O’Shea, the Chief Executive of Centrica, said Britain had “almost no gas in storage in the UK for the coming winter”.
O’Shea said low gas reserves in the UK were a “huge concern” and that the country had “for too long” relied on other countries for energy imports while underinvesting in storage and power plants.
Britain’s gas facilities were around 30% full this week, down from 46% at the same time last year. They were more than 90% full in the two years before that.
Gas levels are currently at the lowest level for August since records began, according to Bloomberg data.
It follows the dramatic fall in tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, which usually accounts for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas shipping.
O’Shea wrote on LinkedIn: “We have almost no gas in storage in the UK for the coming winter, and this is a huge concern as energy security is national security.”
The low storage levels leave Britain more open to paying higher prices for shipments of energy.
European gas prices have doubled since the start of the Iran war.
Dutch TTF, the European gas benchmark, rose to more than €69 per megawatt hour on Tuesday, its highest level since March.
The jump in gas prices comes just a day after Ofgem increased its cap on energy prices by 4%, putting average household gas and electricity bills at £1,723 a year.
Worth reading in full.
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All part of the Establishment’s plan to deconstruct Great Britain.
When the Government is advising people to stock up on candles you know that they are doing it deliberately.
These consequences are a natural outcome of Net Zero and the CCA. Why did the energy industry not speak up earlier.
Answer: they are part of the same mindless class as the politicians.
There’s a warning like this every year. So far we’ve dodged the bullet because we haven’t had a really cold winter since 2010 We may well get lucky again this year but sooner or later our luck will run out.
That Chris looks like one of those conspiracy theorists Ed Miliband and organisations like the BBC have warned everyone about.
Porky-pie alert!
40% of UK gas is piped ashore from the UK Continental shelf so requires no storage – and is not affected by global gas market price volatility. And this could easily be increased – except Net Zero.
Additional piped gas could be obtained via inter-connectors from Norway – needs no storage.
Centrica via its wholly owned subsidiary Centrica Energy Storage operates the largest gas storage facility, the Rough storage – formerly the Rough gas field, now depleted, off the Yorkshire coast.
Centrica has stopped supplying and pressurising this facility – so Centrica is the cause of reduced storage of which it warns – because it wants a £2billion (taxpayer funded bung) from Government to pay for its continued operation – and says it will shut it down in 2027 unless it gets the cash.
The balance of UK domestic gas is LNG from the USA so closure of Hormuz Straits made no difference, as nearly all our LNG imports come from the US across the Atlantic, and the future, contracted prices have been stable. The Telegraph should get its facts right – if that is ever possible.
So, Mr O’Shea is being somewhat disingenuous, economical with the truth.
… Read more »
All quite possible, even perhaps likely (governments have been making life rather difficult for proper energy companies, so why shouldn’t he demand a reverse of this?) but gas storage being at all-time lows is, let’s face it…rather significant. Piping gas from other countries depends on… other countries… which is a vulnerability, is it not?
And it’s the Telegraph, not Chris, which has used words precisely to allow the idle reader to believe this problem is because of the situation in the Straits of Hormuz.
Not “possible” fact. Go ahead check.
UK Gas fields aren’t other Countries!
It’s not the Government who will pay, it’s the taxpayer.
I did say the Telegraph should check its facts.
40% of gas comes from UK gas fields so, at least in the short term 60% needs to be imported.
Pipelines can only supply so much per hour as can LNG imports. If peak demand exceeds maximum supply per hour they’ll be a shortfall, if this wasn’t the case we wouldn’t need any storage.
No one has ever suggested they’ll be periods when there’s no gas available just a shortage that could last for days until the next LNG tanker arrives.
The Net Zero fanatics imagine a time with no gas.
I doubt there is much gas in Europe available for purchase. Pipelines have fixed capacity limits.
Then what?
Will the government offer any kind of response? And if it does, will it just be to say that:
a) This proves how our reliance on oil and gas makes us vulnerable to fluctuations in supply and market prices,
and
b) This proves how important it is for us to achieve greater energy security by investing more heavily and more quickly in clean green power?
Where I am it is dull with little wind. I wonder where the elites think power will come froom.
The pixies at the end of the garden…
If it’s left to Fahnbulleh there’ll be no response. Or certainly not one worth listening to
This was all obviously predictable and predicted by many on here!
You can only assume this is all part of the plan.
Energy security is national security, absolutely.
Burnham would rather kiss the feet (keeping it clean) of Zelensky and threaten a nuclear superpower than address this issue.
Strange that when Iraq was bombing the marsh arabs we said it was a casus belli and promptly bombed the crap out of Hussain, when Belgrade was killing Bosnians, we again went to war to defend the people of Sarajevo, but when Russia tries to go to the assistance of the ethnic Russians who were being shelled by the Ukrainian government, Russia is an evil invader. Ukraine reached terms for a peace deal with the evil Russians but Johnson, together with the USA told Zelensky not to sign it, because we’ll happily bankrupt our country to keep Ukrainians and Russians dying in the meat grinder.
The Russians now living in Ukraine are only there because Stalin excommunicated most of the ethnic Ukranians to Siberia and gave the homes he stole to Russians in the Holomodor. So they’re just illegal occupiers who should be expelled.
Bet we’ve never earned what he gets.
Apparently the Cock of the North can only deal with one big issue at a time. Currently his focus is on becoming a Tik-Tok celebrity.