Natural Gas Crisis in the UK?

Yeesh. Bad times for England:

The problems really started Thursday 16th February with an accident at the Bravo gas rig some 18 miles off the East coast of Yorkshire. This platform is a key component in the Rough gas storage facility, the UK's long term gas storage facility holding the vast majority of our stored gas. The facility is not expected back online until at least 1st May now.

With Rough out of the picture daily gas supply over what can be directly extracted from the North Sea gas fields and imported through the continental interconnector has been met from the medium and short term storage. Whilst this storage is capable of meeting all but the most extreme demand daily flow rates (luckily we haven't had any really cold weather) the flow rates can't be maintained for long since the volume just isn't there.

After almost four weeks, the short term storage has been reduced to just 724GWh and medium term to 2,311GWh. At the maximum rate of extraction (likely due to cold weather and long term storage being offline) these reserves will last for 1.1 and 7.6 days respectively. At immediate threat is the short term storage with a maximum flow rate of 526GWh (~48 million cubic meters). That 48mcm represents 13% of current daily demand.

The UK is presenting us with an early vision of what North American winters may look like in a decade or so, if Dave Hughes is right. Canada and the US only have 8 years or so of conventional natural gas left, if current reserves are right. Meanwhile, we're now digging more and more wells (3x as many as in 1997), and we're only barely holding the supply level. It's unlikely that North American gas production willever increase substantially again.

We should all be paying attention to the UK in the next few weeks, and see how this turns out. It should be educational.

(Oh, and despite my recent reading of V for Vendetta, I resisted the urge to use the catchphrase "England endures." Aren't you all proud of me?)