National Grid warns of UK gas shortage

There were urgent calls for Britain to build more gas storage facilities tonight after the National Grid warned of temporary gas shortages as demand neared record highs during the freezing weather.

The shadow energy secretary, Greg Clark, accused the government of having its “head in the sand” for failing to ensure that more storage facilities had been put in place over the past decade, and claimed that Britain had just eight days of capacity.
The National Grid issued a “gas balancing alert” on Monday, asking power firms and large industries to cut back on their consumption. It was only the second time the alert has ever been issued. However, a grid spokesman said there was no danger of Britain running short of gas, and blamed the shortage on problems in a particular gas field. Supplies had since risen and the alert had been lifted, he said. “We do have more than adequate supplies for the whole of the UK.”

But critics said the alert highlighted a dangerous weakness in the energy supply system. “The chronic lack of storage capacity is impacting on security of supply,” said David Hunter, an energy analyst at the consultancy McKinnon & Clarke.

Hunter described the Conservative claim of just eight days’ storage as alarmist and suggested that the UK had about three weeks’ storage capacity – though this is still relatively little compared with Germany’s, which is four months. He said the failure to build other sources of energy generation, such as wind or nuclear, on any scale, would leave Britain more reliant on gas and, as North Sea fields ran dry, more dependent on imports.

Guardian