Giving evidence at a one-off session for the House of Lords EU sub-committee D (Agriculture, fisheries, environment and energy), Davey said the range of gas supplies to the UK meant Britain does not have to rely on gas storage.
“Few other countries have the amount of gas – from the North Sea – in domestic production, have the pipelines that we do from very secure supply countries like Norway,” he told peers.
Davey added: “We’ve got other forms of supply, which is why when we’ve seen tightening markets, we’ve not seen a problem at all – never been near a problem in this regards.”
This reiterates the view the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) from March this year, when gas spot prices spiked to a record high of 150 pence per therm following an interconnector failure, and a number of media reports claimed the UK was about to run out of gas.
At the time, Decc said: “Gas storage would never be the sole source of gas meeting our needs, so it is misleading to talk purely about how many days’ supply is in storage.
“Storage levels are low at the moment – as you’d expect towards the end of winter – and the UK gas market is tight. But the market is responding as it is designed to do – gas prices are rising and supply is being maintained accordingly.”