British Gas owner Centrica warning on storage will not affect supply, says network

The UK has enough gas to meet winter demand, the network operator has said, after British Gas owner Centrica warned about “concerningly low” storage levels.

Centrica, which owns the country’s largest gas storage facility, said the UK had “less than a week of gas demand in store” due to colder-than-usual weather.

But National Gas, which owns the UK gas network, said the UK gets its gas from “a diverse range of sources” and that storage “remains healthy”.

Energy analysts said even if gas storage did run low, the UK could buy in more from Europe and other countries.

Centrica has said that UK gas storage facilities are currently about half-full.

“Plunging temperatures and high demand for gas-fired power stations have reduced UK winter gas storage to concerningly low levels,” it said.

“Stubbornly high” gas prices had made it “more difficult to top up storage”, the company added.

Parts of the UK are experiencing freezing conditions, with extremely low night-time temperatures forecast in some areas.

Gas central heating is the most common way that households heat their homes. Around three in four households (74%) in England and Wales said it was their only central heating source in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics.

National Gas, which owns and operates nearly 5,000 miles of the UK’s gas transmission system, said the “overall picture across Great Britain’s eight main gas storage sites remains healthy with average levels at just over 60% across the board”.

It added it was “well-placed to respond to demand this winter”.

Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said that there are various gas pipelines running from Europe to the UK, and the country also gets shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Given household energy prices are currently capped until the end of March, any shortage would be very unlikely to affect consumer bills, he said.

If there was a short-term spike in wholesale prices, this could affect some business customers, he said.

However, the weather in the UK is forecast to become milder from Tuesday meaning a spike may not happen, he added.

Wholesale prices are currently lower than they were at the beginning of the year.

“There does not appear to be a risk of a physical shortage in UK gas supply this winter,” said Jack Sharples, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

As well as LNG, Dr Sharples said the UK still gets some gas from North Sea fields and there are pipelines running to the UK from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The government said it was “confident the UK has enough natural gas supplies to make it through the winter”.

Gas inventory levels have come under pressure from the cold weather conditions and the end of Russian gas pipeline supplies through Ukraine at the end of last month.

The UK has relatively little capacity to store gas, but has more than it did compared with a few years ago.

About half of the capacity it has is at Centrica’s Rough facility off the coast of East Yorkshire.

This was closed in 2017, but then partly reopened in October 2022 following the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There is also LNG storage at three terminals, and other smaller facilities across the country.

If the UK needed more gas, traders would have access to EU stocks, provided they paid the right price.

Centrica wants to invest £2bn in the Rough facility, so it can use it to store more gas, then hydrogen as the UK starts to burn less natural gas to meet green targets.

It has been pushing the government to say hydrogen will be part of the UK energy mix in the future to justify that investment.