 | The Permanent Oil Crisis Conference in Amsterdam, January 21 & 22, 2009 | The Oil Drum: Europe | Energy Policy: SER-2 [01] Introduction |  |
66 comments on The Russian Bear?
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66 comments on The Russian Bear?
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Does anyone know if there is any information on Russian long term gas storage and its recent daily draw rates? I know that information is available on a daily basis for many countries so is there any Russian info?
Gazprom says there has been no reduction in gas production as it is all being stored but declines to say how long it could keep filling storage on the grounds that would be useful information to the Ukraine (news report I saw earlier somewhere but cannot immediately find link). So just how long can Russia keep storing 80% of its normal supply to Europe. One thing definitely implied by the Gazprom statement is that long term storage was not full before the cut. Another statement I saw suggested that Ukraine has a lot of long term storage capacity and has filled it to the brim with Russian gas. Anyone know the details on that?
It is interesting that the full cut was initiated on a day with demand probably around the peak daily demand for the winter - unless it turns into a really bad rest of the winter of course...
As pointed out by xeroid in the drumbeat, the UK has drawn down from long term storage at greater than the published maximum possible rate for the last two days in a row. If European problems caused a cut in imports of Norwegian gas it seems to me the only way the UK could make up the shortfall in cold weather would be with immediate LNG imports.
It would be bad business if long term storage was full on Jan 4. With normal weather (last century) which they've had they should have been sucking on storage for six weeks or so. Eyeballing Euan's graph, Russia exports about 25% of production. With other pipelines running flat out they've got what, 15-17% extra right now. In a cold snap I'd not be surprised if they could burn all of it with nothing left to go into storage.
Undertow,
don't worry about the UK, our great leaders are on top of it, no problem here move on
"no risk to the UK since we receive very little gas from Russia - none directly and at most two per cent indirectly in the mix we receive from continental Europe. UK gas storage stocks are at healthy levels for the time of year. There is an improving outlook of UK security of supply for the remainder of the winter. We continue to have healthy North Sea supplies, as well as access to the large gas reserves in Norway via pipelines, and to the global liquefied natural gas market via National Grid's terminal at Grain - which is soon to finish commissioning its second phase operations."
It smacks of total complacency to me, our gas storage is pathetically small and the North Sea output does not meet our winter requirements (we sell gas in the summer when it is cheap and demand is low import in winter when expensive and demand is high!!) Why should Norway sell to us in particular at a time when demand is likely to be higher?? In fact is there not a "problem" with a pipeline that is taking months to fix, so is it even possible?? Whilst the second LNG terminal might soon be ready (after the cold weather??) is there any guarantee we will get supplies?
"suggested that Ukraine has a lot of long term storage capacity and has filled it to the brim with Russian gas."
Unless the Ukrainians are totally stupid and incompetent they will have completely filled their storage before the contract expired at the end of last year so they could be ready for any problems.
Didn't we learn from Jerome's article that one of Gazprom's problems is that most of the storage apacity is actually in Ukraine?