Dutch BBL to be Bi-Directional from 2019
BBL Company said December 14 its subsea pipeline will go bi-directional from autumn 2019. While it accepts nominations for flow in either direction, net flows through the 235-km BBL pipeline beneath the North Sea today can only be towards the UK. That will change in two years' time.
BBL Company, 60%-owned by Dutch state-owned Gasunie, said the adaptation – which will be made through technical modifications to the Dutch compressor station at Anna Paulowna and UK gas terminal at Bacton (see map above) – will further strengthen trade between the Dutch TTF hub and UK-NBP.
Underlying its move is that Dutch gas production has declined sharply since 2013, because of government restrictions on output from the country’s giant Groningen gasfield, imposed because production there was causing minor earthquakes. Last month too it was decided that BBL will be fully integrated into the TTF market area, providing a direct interface between Europe's two leading gas hubs TTF and NBP.
BBL Company managing director Luuk Feenstra said: “Making transportation possible in both directions is an exciting new step towards this goal and one that fits in with the recently announced integration of the TTF and BBL market areas as of 1 January 2018.”
He said the Netherlands and the UK have very liquid markets, but not the same supply and demand dynamics: “With only a limited investment, we can bring those markets closer together so that they can make better use of the existing infrastructure, such as storage facilities, LNG terminals and supply pipelines in both countries.”
Feenstra said there is demand for pipeline capacity to transport gas – much of it Norwegian in origin – from the UK to the continent, especially in summer: “Seasonal storage facilities in the UK have insufficient capacity to store this surplus gas, partly due to the decommissioning of the Rough storage which used to be Britain’s largest gas storage facility. The Netherlands and Germany have much more storage capacity than the UK. It is therefore expected that, during the summer months, there will be more demand for gas transportation capacity from the UK to the Netherlands, and in the opposite direction during the winter,” added Feenstra.
BBL’s Interconnection Point at Bacton on the Prisma auction platform is expected to be very relevant in the future, he added, as it bridges the two largest European gas hubs TTF and NBP.
Gasunie’s partners in BBL Company are Germany’s Uniper and Belgian gas grid Fluxys, each with 20% equity.