Algeria's state-owned Sonatrach has met all its French LNG supply contractual obligations, a company source said late Thursday, despite having suffered a three-week unplanned outage at its main Skikda LNG facility.
The source told Algeria's state news agency APS that France's Engie had requested additional LNG to meet demand during a cold spell that has coincided with saturated capacity between northern and southern France.
But Sonatrach was unable to meet that request, the source said.
"Sonatrach is within its rights to turn down the request to make sure it can meet its other customer obligations," the source said.
Engie could not be reached for immediate comment.
On Wednesday, a separate Sonatrach source told S&P Global Platts that the company was in the process of restarting the Skikda LNG plant after a near three-week unplanned outage.
The 4.7 million mt/year plant went down at the end of December due to a heat exchanger issue, the source said.
The last LNG cargo from Skikda left the facility on December 29 aboard the Sonatrach vessel, the Cheikh el Mokrani, which was delivered to the French LNG import terminal of Fos-sur-Mer, according to cFlow, S&P Global Platts trade flow software.
Since the outage, Sonatrach has been meeting its contractual supply obligations by sending LNG from the smaller Arzew export plant.
Since December 29, 13 LNG cargoes have left Arzew for destinations including Fos-sur-Mer, Revithoussa in Greece and Martas in Turkey, according to cFlow.
The unplanned outage at Skikda contributed to the recent spike in gas prices in France and Spain.
In France, the TRS spot price reached a record high last week of Eur40.175/MWh, according to Platts assessments.
Having fallen back this week, the price jumped again Thursday to Eur34.20/MWh due to expectations of an increased capacity restriction on the North-South link.
Thierry Trouve, CEO of French grid operator GRTGaz, said Tuesday there had been a recurring bottleneck since the beginning of the winter due to low LNG arrivals at Fos-sur-Mer.
But Algeria's energy minister Noureddine Boutarfa said Thursday that Algeria had no problems as it was meeting its contractual obligations.
"It's not up to us to worry about the French," he said.
