We're always ready: but we don't expect a national supply emergency this winter

There’s been considerable and understandable media interest this summer about how Britain’s gas supplies are shaping up for the coming months, after Russia reduced gas flows to mainland Europe. The resulting stories vary from balanced assessments to imaginative works of fiction, with too many making the assumption that the UK will inevitably face supply problems this winter.

So let’s get this straight first; a national gas supply emergency is an extremely unlikely scenario. The UK has been well supplied with gas throughout 2022, mostly coming from reliable UK and Norwegian gas fields in the North Sea. A strong stream of liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries from a range of countries has supplemented this in the first half of the year: before the invasion of Ukraine in February, we typically received around 3 or 4 per cent of our gas from Russia each year. Gas is a global commodity market, so the impact on the UK has been far more about increasing wholesale prices than actual supply.

Of course, it is still prudent for us to have emergency processes for the worst case, and we also exercise these every autumn with Government, regulators and the wider energy industry. The UK is like other European countries in having gas emergency measures which aim to protect household consumers. That means large industrial users would play their part in reducing consumption: but only if this was the only way to safeguard consumer supplies in a developing emergency, a nuance the mainstream media hasn’t yet picked up.

National Grid Gas would not be directing emergency actions, even though we would be central to delivering them. UK legislation requires enacting a National Emergency Coordinator (NEC) who would cease to work for National Grid during such a major incident: they would have to set business interests aside. The NEC would be legally required to take whatever actions necessary to ensure the safe operation of the network, irrespective of financial or other impact on National Grid. At the moment we do not envisage deploying any of these mechanisms in 2022/23, but it is our duty to be ready.

Meanwhile we’re concentrating more on the role we have in supporting European storage as far as possible. National Grid Gas Transmission has been going well beyond its obligations in maximising export capacity to mainland Europe through the two gas interconnectors, typically exporting 75 million cubic metres (mcm) per day over the past few months since the war in Ukraine started. This compares to our obligation of 60mcm/day; and if we keep exporting at the current rate until September, Britain’s contribution will be equivalent to 15% of European long-term storage.

In addition to this, we recently combined across the industry to assemble and send key specialist components to help Ukraine to repair and replace infrastructure damaged during Russia’s invasion. Our employees have been shocked by recent events in Ukraine and were motivated to help Ukrainian citizens and our counterparts in the Ukrainian energy sector, using our specialist expertise. It has been a Herculean collaborative effort, with some fantastic leadership demonstrated across the industry.

So rest assured that we’re working closely with Government, our regulator Ofgem and the wider gas industry to enhance supply security for UK consumers next winter and in future winters. We are always prepared for the worst case: but there is no expectation that we will deploy emergency measures.