Spain Smashes Daily Demand Records
Spanish gas transmission system operator Enagas said that both December 4 and 5 set historic daily gas demand records in Spain.
Its spokesman told NGW that Spain's total gas demand December 5 reached 1,772 gigawatt-hours of gas (1.772 TWh-gas, or equivalent to some 164.8mn m3), the highest on any one day since November 2010.
Included in that December 5 total was 630 GWh of gas consumed in power generation, also the highest value in the last seven years, he told NGW by email in the evening of December 6.
Enagas had already announced that demand for natural gas in Spain hit 1,670 GWh December 4 (then the highest on record since January 2011), due to high demand reported by the industrial and domestic and commercial sectors, and increased deliveries of gas to power generators. The company said gas used by generators on December 4 reached 509 GWh because of several factors: high demand for electricity, low wind and hydroelectricity generation, and one nuclear power plant in Spain being offline. It has also been cold, with Madrid overnight December 6 into 7 expected to reach zero degrees Celsius.
Gas demand in Spain in 2017 up to December 4 had grown by about 9% over the same period of 2016, said Enagas, reaching 319,122 GWh (29.7bn m3), owing to growth in conventional demand and delivery of natural gas for power generation. Industrial demand is growing at around 7%, it added.