France Really Should Cope This Winter: TSOs
France’s two main gas transmission system operators (TSOs) - GRTgaz and Terega - are confident that demand for gas will be met this winter, even in the event of an exceptionally cold spell.
Their analysis, presented November 22, is based on the capacity offered to shippers as well as the level of volumes booked for supplying the network at the various entry and exits.
They added that volumes booked in storage at November 1 2018 totalled 128 terawatt-hours of gas (11.9bn m3), their highest since 2010, and 49% higher than the 86 TWh stored at Nov.1 2017. That follows an intense bout of gas injections from May to October, which resulted from tighter regulatory requirements on shippers to maintain stocks.
GRTgaz CEO Thierry Trouve and his Terega counterpart Dominique Mockly also said that security of supply had been strengthened by the creation on November 1 of a new single market zone, Trading Region France (TRF). Until then, there were two trading hubs, PEG (gas exchange point) Nord and Sud.
In their Winter Outlook 2018/2019, covering the period from November to March, GRTgaz and Terega said there had been a 42% increase in North/South gas transmission capacity, made possible by the €872m ($994mn) investment on new and upgraded pipelines needed to introduce TRF. The spending was mainly on GRTgaz’s strategic €727mn Val de Saone pipe project, plus Terega’s Gascogne-Midi pipe.
It can't get worse than the last two winters ,surely?
France, like many other countries, reported record gas demand days during late February and early March, as the continent shivered and storage inventories were depleted.
But arguably it was the previous winter, in January 2017, that France was more disrupted - after a key Algerian LNG export plant at Skikda went into unscheduled turnaround, causing a huge spike in gas prices in Algeria's short-haul markets in southern France (the Peg Sud market) and Spain, as neither was able to schedule replacement cargoes to cover the shortfall for several weeks. A lack north-south pipeline capacity in France, plus increased demand from gas-fired power plants because many nuclear generators were offline, also exacerbated tight gas supply situation. Ironically Trouve and Mockly had anticipated no major supply shortfalls that winter on Nov.22 2016 as well - but the extra flow capacity built since means this time they should be right.