Europe's Swing in Steep Decline: Timera
Western Europe’s swing gas production capacity is declining fast, a London-based consultancy has said. Timera Energy on its blog March 26 expects swing production capacity to decline rapidly by 2030 – indeed more sharply than the region's annual production.
Prior to 2013, the Netherlands historically provided a seasonal swing of 6-7bn m3 of monthly output from the highest winter production month to the lowest summer production month. That swing capability will now fall to less than 1bn m3, forecasts Timera, as a result of an expected cut to 12bn m3/yr in the cap placed on output from the country’s largest Groningen field (which produced 54bn m3/yr in 2013, the year before the Dutch government began curbing production to reduce earth tremors).
Norway provides 3-4bn m3 peak winter to trough summer monthly swing, but Timera says this is likely to fall to under 2bn m3 later next decade, although the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate figures show that summer output last year rose relative to the year before, more than winter output, narrowing the difference between the seasons. The UK peak-to-trough monthly swing is less than 1bn m3 and expected to fall sharply next decade.
Timera concludes that the region will become more reliant on flexible imports to cover its winter needs, including Russian gas and global LNG imports. The full Timera Energy blog may be accessed here.