Natural gas withdrawals from UK storage facilities hit a record high Wednesday as cold temperatures pushed up demand and prices.
End-of-day nominations showed total withdrawals of 112 million cubic meters, of which 44 million cu m came from the UK's long-range storage facility, the Centrica-owned Rough, data from Platts' unit Bentek Energy showed.
"Clearly this was incentivized by bullish prices; it shows that the smaller facilities accounted for 61% of total activity including record withdrawals at Holford (18 million cu m), Aldbrough (16 million cu m) and Humbly Grove (7 million cu m)," Bentek said.
Gas demand in the UK Wednesday surged 80 million cu m past seasonal norms to 389 million cu m on below-average temperatures gripped the country.
Gas-fired power generation hit its highest level for the 2012/13 winter to at 22 GW at about 1700 GMT due to a combination of strong overall power demand of 56.5 GW and wind generation levels falling below the 1 GW mark, according to National Grid data.
Temperatures in London were 7 degrees Celsius below average, CustomWeather said.
The day-ahead wholesale gas price on the UK's NBP trading hub hit the highest level since December 5, at 69.45 pence/therm, having gained 1.20 p/th day-on-day.
At 1000 GMT Thursday, demand was forecast was expected to come in at a level similar to Wednesday at 390 million cu m and prices continued to climb with the day-ahead contract hitting a high of 72.00 p/th.
"Storage activity needs to be quite high again today," Bentek said.
"Nominations are for withdrawals close to yesterday's record levels.
"Rough cannot do more than it is doing and therefore smaller, highly flexible, facilities are being called upon to meet demand. This is an expensive way to meet demand during winter, but the UK has little other option as average monthly LNG send-out is closing in on 4-year lows," a Bentek analyst said.
LNG deliveries are thin as high Asian and South American prices absorb supply.
