Call for strategic gas storage in UK

摘要

The UK cannot rely on the current market to deliver large gas storage facilities of a sufficient scale to ensure UK security of gas supply,the independent analyst ILEX Energy Consultancy has warned in a recently published report.* While the market has successfully triggered investment in new 'bite-sized' onshore storage to cope with the normal variations in seasonal demand,ILEX has identified several factors blocking potential investment in larger longer-term 'strategic' storage as insurance against unforeseen major supply disruptions.Such storage would be similar in size to the current Rough gas storage facility,which has a capacity of around 3bn cm(or around 3% of annual UK gas supply),and would typically be a converted partially depleted gas field offshore.