France's Southeast is Short of Gas: GRTgaz

France’s main gas grid operator GRTgaz has called for more LNG to be delivered, regasified and sent out from the two LNG import terminals at Fos to cover a shortfall in deliveries to the southeast of the country.

It also said that from January 4 until the end of this winter, it will communicate daily to market players  the minimum volumes required to be regasified at Fos.

Last week GRTgaz said that, since November, it had seen bottlenecks in southeast France – particularly on the Rhone Pipeline – as a result of low sendout from the Fos LNG terminals, with 22 ‘amber-level’ alerts in the southeast this winter, of which 15 in December alone.

A glance at GRTgaz’s alert noticeboard earlier in the morning of January 3 showed that southeast France that day was on the highest ‘red alert’, whereas there were no problems elsewhere on its gas grid. The region's red alert was later that day downgraded to an 'amber' alert.

Map showing gas storage facilities belonging to Storengy in France, with Manosque shown in the southeast (Map credit: Storengy)

In its December 29 statement, GRTgaz said the situation has been exacerbated by a constraint on how much can be withdrawn from the 0.5bn m³ Manosque gas storage facility in Provence, southeast France. To remedy, that GRTgaz said it will need sendout from the Fos terminals to exceed 120 GWh/d (11.2mn m³/d) each day for a three-day period. The full GRTgaz statement can be read here.

Mark Smedley