Spanish Gas Market Grows in 1Q

Gas supplies to the Spanish market in 1Q2017 were up by 8.4% year on year, according to Enagas.

The gas grid operator that supplies to power generators increased by 16.5% to 13.5 terawatt-hours of gas (1.25bn m³) while those to residential and business users grew by 7.2% to 83 TWh (7.7bn m³).

Overall supplies in 1Q2017 to the Spanish market reached 96.5 TWh-gas (8.95bn m³), according to an Enagas bulletin released April 18. It noted that no LNG cargoes were reloaded at Spanish terminals in 1Q2017, in marked contrast to earlier this decade.

Data released by Eurogas a week ago showed that Spain's overall consumption in 2016 increased by slightly over 2%, relative to 2015.

Supplies over the past 12 months

Enagas also reported April 18 that gas supplied to Spain in the 12 months ending March 2017 remained dominated by Algeria’s stable 56% share, followed by LNG from Nigeria 15%. Imports by pipe from France (9%) were slightly ahead of LNG from Qatar and Peru (each 7%) and well ahead of LNG from Trinidad and Norway (each 2%) as well as the US (1.1%) and Angola (0.6%). Spain itself produced 0.2%, including from stocks.

Photo credit: Enagas

In terms of import pipelines over the same 12-month period, the two principle routes into Spain remained the Maghreb-Europe pipeline via Morocco, which carried 102.2 TWh (9.5bn m³), and the Medgaz pipe that runs subsea to Almeria, which carried 82 TWh (7.6bn m³), both up year on year. The two pipelines carry Algerian gas to Spain, including some gas that is used in neighbouring Portugal and France.

Spain's Algerian LNG imports for the same 12-month period were down by 13% to 29.2 TWh, impacted by an unscheduled outage at Algeria's Skikda LNG export plant at the start of the year.

Mark Smedley