By Will Jones
The boss of British Gas’s owner has warned the UK faces fuel shortages this winter as stockpiles fall to just 30% owing to an over-reliance on imports. The Telegraph has more.
Chris O’Shea, the Chief Executive of Centrica, said Britain had “almost no gas in storage in the UK for the coming winter”.
O’Shea said low gas reserves in the UK were a “huge concern” and that the country had “for too long” relied on other countries for energy imports while underinvesting in storage and power plants.
Britain’s gas facilities were around 30% full this week, down from 46% at the same time last year. They were more than 90% full in the two years before that.
Gas levels are currently at the lowest level for August since records began, according to Bloomberg data.
It follows the dramatic fall in tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, which usually accounts for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas shipping.
O’Shea wrote on LinkedIn: “We have almost no gas in storage in the UK for the coming winter, and this is a huge concern as energy security is national security.”
The low storage levels leave Britain more open to paying higher prices for shipments of energy.
European gas prices have doubled since the start of the Iran war.
Dutch TTF, the European gas benchmark, rose to more than €69 per megawatt hour on Tuesday, its highest level since March.
The jump in gas prices comes just a day after Ofgem increased its cap on energy prices by 4%, putting average household gas and electricity bills at £1,723 a year.
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