Clarification of the network, flows and gas consumption situation
Christophe Bouvier, Gas System Assistant Director, Jean-Damien Lenoir and Arnaud Chevillon, Sales and Marketing Representatives, and Frédéric Folscheid, Strategic Analyst, provide their insight, with positive changes in indicators observed across the board.
Focus on gas consumption for April: the recovery takes hold!
GRTgaz observes a gradual recovery of gas consumption by industrial customers connected to its network for the month of April.
The impact of the health crisis on industrial customers’ consumption (around -20% at the beginning of April) has gradually reduced throughout the month, reaching around -10% by month’s end. The average impact for April is in the region of -15%.
Proof of this recovery: the vast majority of industrial sites informing GRTgaz of their shutdown have seen a total or partial resumption.
The CCCGs, for their part, have almost all remained in shutdown. This situation correlates to the demand for electricity, which has also seen a reduction due the health crisis.
What’s new regarding the supply flows?
There is some good news when it comes to flows: no bottleneck has been observed since the start of 2020.
Since the beginning of April, we have seen some large injections into the storage facilities. There was a new monthly record set for the whole of France, which recorded injections of more than 26.5 TWh (see the data: https://agsi.gie.eu).
The level of emissions from LNG terminals into the GRTgaz network was also very high (around 900 GWh/day on average in the second fortnight of April).
Gas exports are near to their maximum level in Oltingue (to Switzerland and Italy) but more moderate to Spain.