North West Europe Gas System Performance – October 2019
We are pleased to present Aurora’s latest North West European Gas System Performance Report.
Highlights of our October 2019 report include:
1) Gas prices: Belgian prices rose by 11% month-on-month due to colder weather. GB prices also increased by 6% compared to last month as low temperatures lifted demand for heating, while indigenous production struggled to keep up with rising GB demand due to a short outage in the Forties pipeline caused by a lightning strike
2) Consumption: Gas consumption in NW Europe was up 9% (a 1.8 bcm increase) compared to October last year, almost reaching the 5 year trailing maximum. Gas consumption for Germany increased by 1.8 bcm and for the Netherlands by 0.5 bcm, whilst French gas consumption decreased by 0.8 bcm
3) Supply: LNG imports increased by 0.9 bcm year-on-year, accounting for 14% of total gas supply, which compensated for 2.2 bcm of lower pipeline supply from Norway and Russia. The former lost 3%-points and the latter lost 2%-points in EU market share year-on-year
- Indigenous production: Dutch production decreased by 16% year-on-year due to the lower production cap at Groningen, but GB production stayed constant at 2.7 bcm over the same period. Compared to September, Dutch and GB production increased by 26% and 11% respectively to meet strong residential gas demand as winter approached
- Pipeline imports: NW European pipe imports were 2.2 bcm (11%) lower year-on-year. Norwegian flows saw a decrease of 1.2 bcm compared to last October, caused by more maintenance works and technical problems at offshore platforms (e.g. Troll, Kvitebjørn and Aasta Hansteen). Russian flows also were 1.1 bcm lower, with the Czech route seeing the biggest decline (0.6 bcm)
- LNG: NW European LNG send-outs from regasification terminals grew by 68% month-on-month to meet higher heating demand. GB saw a 48% higher utilisation rate than September, exporting 0.9 bcm more gas from South Hook and Grain into the GB network across the same time periods. Similarly, the rest of NW Europe saw higher monthly utilisation rates compared to last month
4) Storage: The Netherlands saw net withdrawals of 0.2 bcm, which occurred earlier than last October, to fill the supply gap left by indigenous production. Net storage injections were down 91% year-on-year, as higher demand led to higher withdrawals than the same period last year
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