The situation of congestion in the South-East of France seen at the end of January had somewhat eased in the first week of February, amid temperatures rising to more milder levels that what seen earlier, according to grid operator GRTGaz.
The gas TSO, which is publishing regular updates on the bottleneck situation in the area, said that “continuity of supply guaranteed for French consumers connected to the GRTgaz network” the period January 30-February 5, with daily consumption levels ranging between 1,653 GWh and 2,230 GWh compared to a daily peak of 2,924 GWh reached on January 19.
Gas withdrawals from the Fos Cavaou LNG terminal and warmer temperatures helped ease the congestion over the week except on Tuesday 31 January, when the alert was maintained at “orange” - or medium – level, it said.
CCGT plants in France reached 10% of generation on January 25
In its previous update, GRTGaz had said that gas-to-power demand from France's 13 CCGT plants had reached 495 GWh on January 25 amid a spell of cold weather affecting the country.
Specifically, the week until January 26 had been “marked by very cold temperatures” leading to a “robust supply of electricity from gas turbine power plants” which accounted for 10 % of national production on the peak day of January 25, when gas demand had reached 2,893 GWh, representing output of approximately 140 GW at peak gas consumption time (8 am).
The bottleneck situation in the South-East of France had been aggravated by the fact requests for additional volumes of LNG from Algeria could not be met.
However, Sonatrach had said at the end of January that LNG exports out of the Algerian terminal of Skikda had since January 26, after they had stopped in December due to technical issues.
The restart allowed Sonatrach to send to France “the additional LNG loads requested by Engie” the CEO Amine Mazouzi was quoted by media reports as saying.