Statement to Inčukalns underground gas storage users
Dear storage users,
The following announcement is aimed at those of you who by the date have not used significant share of booked storage capacities at Inčukalns underground gas storage (Inčukalns UGS). Operator assumes you are already informed about recently confirmed technical limitations for this injection season and measures taken to lessen the resulting influence on the remaining injection season as much as possible. In order to use capacities booked by you efficiently, additional efforts for detailed planning of technical flows entering Latvian transmission system and injection regimes, besides following the rules of the use of the storage facility, are required from both storage users and operator.
At the set injection capacity of 104 GWh per day, total estimated amount of gas injected into storage during August will be 3 224 GWh and 3 120 GWh - in September. According to current information on bookings, in August physical injection would be covered by 1 350GWh received via Kiemenai and 1 874 GWh - via Korneti, in September - 1 350GWh received via Kiemenai and 1 770 GWh via Korneti.
Operator would like to note, that taking into account the specifics of the transportation of gas, technical flows might vary from estimates day-by-day, but the aim is to steer system for target based on current bookings.
Taking into account estimated physical flows, for the purpose of operations planning, storage operator invites storage users having non-used booked storage capacity to submit their non-binding injection schedules for the remaining injection season sending e-mail to [email protected]. Storage operator would also appreciate the indications on estimated daily flow per cross-border IP planned to be used for the delivery of gas for injection into Inčukalns UGS. If storage user plans to submit full schedules including direct deliveries for immediate use, those shall be indicated and will not be taken into account for injection scheduling.
While daily monitoring of the injection process is performed by the storage operator, the next wider scope review of technical conditions at the Inčukalns UGS is planned to take place at the end of August, which might result with the update of daily injection volumes.
Storage is technologically complex structure. If maximum reservoir pressure is reached or gas presence is observed at observation wells where gas shall not be located, any activities of the storage might be stopped immediately due to technical reasons. Such adverse changes would be communicated to the market by through Conexus webpage and using urgent market messages (UMM).
We also would wish to stress that two year product was introduced with the aim to allow longer storage periods, but gas volumes that can stay over from previous season is technically limited to allow proper operation of the storage. This is specific characteristic of aquifer storages, because certain level of volumes must be injected and withdrawn each cycle to maintain their technical operations at the same level. Currently two year product is booked at 3,2 TWh and that is the only volume that we would expect staying for two seasons. If more gas would stay over, that might change possibility to withdraw gas already injected. Although we expect responsible behaviour from market, taking high level of storage booking with unknown use, we will propose introduction of additional staying over penalty for any other product than two year bundled unit.