Twenty wells are set to be made available for withdrawals at the Rough storage facility.
Twenty storage wells are to be made available for withdrawals at Centrica's Rough facility from the 1st of November; easing supply concerns. This number exceeds Centrica Storage Limited's (CSL) previous estimates which led to predictions of record low gas stocks this winter.
During the winter periods, the UK relies on stored gas reserves to help meet increases in demand and the Rough facility accounts for over 70% of the nation's storage capacity.
Restrictions were placed on the facility last March due to potential safety issues and following an investigation the site was shut down in June, with the imposed outage extended until March/ April 2017. However, Centrica stated that it hoped to open at least four of Rough's storage wells by the start of November; this would limit the site to a maximum withdrawal rate of around 5mcm per day. Whereas twenty available wells would allow a maximum withdrawal rate of 35mcm according to recent data.
CSL also owns British Gas, one of the largest suppliers in the UK and the firm saw its gas prices for winter 2016 fall by 0.90ppt to 40.90ppt following yesterday's announcement, while Q1-2017 fell to 43.70ppt.