The Rough storage facility has released stored gas into the grid for the first time this winter, to meet rising demand during colder temperatures.
Operated by Centrica, Rough is the UK’s largest gas storage facility. This year, Centrica has filled Rough with the equivalent of 18 LNG tankers, double the amount stored last winter.
The facility stopped storing gas in 2017 but was re-opened for gas storage in October 2022, and its capacity was doubled in the summer of 2023. The facility, which is 18 miles off the coast of East Yorkshire, now provides half of the UK’s total gas storage.
Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea said: “Customers are struggling with high energy bills which are driven by international energy prices. Gas storage is vital to ensure the UK can manage demand effectively, keeping prices down, and Rough contributes more than 50% of the UK’s total gas storage.
“I’m proud of the actions our team has taken over the last 18 months, including our decision to bring Rough back online, to underpin the UK’s energy security. However, we still have the lowest levels of energy storage of the world’s major economies with the ability to store fewer than eight days of peak winter demand and this leaves us susceptible to shocks in international markets.
“Gas will continue to be used as a transition fuel for the foreseeable future and we are prepared to invest around £2 billion to quadruple the size of Rough and turn it into the world’s biggest methane and hydrogen storage facility. This would improve materially the UK’s energy resilience and support the transition to net zero, but to invest this amount of money we need the right regulatory support framework.”
Centrica’s Rough storage facility, which once accounted for around 70% of the UK’s gas storage capacity, was closed in 2017 after a testing programme identified problems with a number of the 30 wells used to inject and withdraw gas from the Rough gas field. The firm said it was no longer commercially viable to operate the facility safely.
However, in June 2022, Centrica successfully applied to the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) for a storage licence for the Rough site to enable it to reopen the facility in response to the gas crisis.
Following engineering work over the summer, the site off the Yorkshire coast reopened in October last year.
The Rough storage facility is now earmarked to continue operations until at least 2030, after Ofgem extended exemptions attached to its licence earlier this year.
The regulator approved Centrica Storage Limited’s (CSL) application to extend its exemptions from negotiated third party access (nTPA).
The exemption was due to come to an end in June 2024 but has been extended until 2030.
The regulator signed off on the extension after Centrica warned Ofgem that it would “not maintain the necessary investment now to continue to operate and repurpose Rough storage facility beyond June 2024” without the extension. Centrica also warned that this would “result in minimal gas in storage at the facility during winter 2023/2024”.