Britain’s biggest gas storage site on course to reopen

[ALAN/ALAN D]

Britain’s biggest gas storage site on course to reopen by autumn after being closed for five years.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... tumn-race/

[Mr Gus]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)

Was closed due to "safety concerns" being cited, however that is no proper explanation, so what were they?
(How much go's onto bills this time for a 9 day supply (capacity) or is this being shared costs with Europeans who need has propping up due to Ukraine on a swap n' sell time demand somehow with europe? (Presumably to feed electricity making has turbines & send it down the wire)?

Can anyone give us an idea (joe)!? or the physical containment field in acres / town size equivalent to get scale?

[Oldgreybeard]

The problems with Rough all relate to the age of the old well heads and sub-sea pipelines I believe. The field was drilled in the 1960s and much of the equipment on the seabed is around 50 years old and in a poor state of repair. When it was put in none of it was expected to have a 50 year plus service life as turning the field into a gas storage facility was never a part of the original plan. Lots of the problems relate to an unwillingness to spend money on maintaining equipment that wasn't actively producing gas, too, I suspect. Easy to start penny pinching on something that isn't earning loads of revenue.

There's a very strong argument that strategic energy provision, including storage, shouldn't be left to market forces to provide, IMHO. The vagaries of short term thinking leads to the situation we're in with Rough as well as the situation Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and a few other countries find themselves in now they are being held hostage by Russia.

[Ken]

Does uk really need this, we seemed to have managed so far without it and as each day passes the case for it must reduce.

This to me is just part of the FF industry sensing the oppurtunity to frack and oil and gas advancement and while they are at it the cost can be born by the taxpayer whilst the industry makes the profit. They must think we are desperate or something.


Section 4: Gas
Addy Mettrick 0300 068 5885 oil-gas.statistics@beis.gov.uk
Key headlines
Quarter 1 2022 saw gas demand fall by 12 per cent in comparison with quarter 1 2021. This reflected
reduced domestic consumption following a rise in average temperatures, the removal of most Covid-19
restrictions, and a considerable fall in gas used for electricity generation due to increased renewable output.
Gas production increased by 5 per cent, compared to the previous year when delayed maintenance took
place. However, gas production remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.
LNG imports increased by nearly 50 per cent as UK regasification infrastructure was used to feed
European gas supply. The UK has the second largest regasification infrastructure for LNG in Europe after
Spain. Therefore, the UK played a key role in supplying gas to Europe in quarter 1 2022.
Gas exports more than doubled in quarter 1 2022, as interconnectors with Belgium and the Netherlands
were utilised to export gas to mainland Europe. This reduced interconnector capacity for pipeline imports to
the UK, resulting in a 22 per cent decrease in net imports in comparison with quarter 1 2021.

[Oliver90owner]

It’s a no-brainer to me, if the costs are reasonable, in the current economic and political situations.

Apparently the transfer of NG through the UK to Europe is a bottleneck and Europe cannot cope with large(r) LNG imports. Perhaps some on here have not noticed the potential problems with (energy) supplies to Europe from vlad?

[Tinbum]

I think we have been lucky with mild winters and if we were to get a hard one we would be in the s**t. They often come with windless days! We have the capacity to unload LNG but not to store it, hence why we have been using a lot to generate electricity to export.

I think its just a short term thing that's a necessity, but all this Ukraine stuff is making a swifter change for the better. The politicians are starting to act, on what a lot of people have been saying for years, as it's now becoming forced upon them.

[robl]

I found an interesting graph of demand for the UK versus temperature, made by the met office. There is a very good correlation! I'd expected it to be more complicated than it seems, as I've heard windspeed is important (and it's not generally windy when it's super cold), but that does not show in the graphs below.



https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... /11/114015