Earlier this week, National Grid had urged the power companies to use gas judiciously to meet the rising demand and emphasized on building more gas storage facilities. The alert was triggered by increase in gas demand and the problem with a pipeline supplying gas from Norway.
Tom Foulkes, director general of Institution of Civil Engineers, said: “The UK’s gas policy needs urgent re-thinking. We are far too dependent on gas, with over 70% of the UK’s homes reliant on gas for domestic heating.
“The UK has the largest demand for gas in Europe but we have very little storage capacity in comparison. It makes sense commercially and for ongoing security of supply to focus on urgently redressing this imbalance.”
According to National Grid, gas supplies to the UK fell following temporary technical problems in Norwegian gas fields. This resulted in the company issuing the gas balancing alert to inform the gas market about the drop in expected supplies. The alert indicates that there is the potential for gas demand to exceed supply. This allows the market to take such action such as generators burning coal rather than gas to generate electricity.
However, National Grid has said that gas market has been quick to respond after supplies to the UK from Norway were unexpectedly lost earlier. Additional supplies are now coming in from liquefied natural gas terminals and from storage and supplies from Norway have been restored.
