Following the Gas for Capacity Auction 16th June 2020, the expansion of the storage capacity in Stenlille was started on 1 July and proceeded until today 28 August 2020 at 06:00 am. 

The supply situation in NW Europe has been affected by a drop in the overall gas import, which is expected to ramp up and top during first half of September. Due to these circumstances, the spread between DA and Q1 21 has narrowed and therefore, starting from 28 August 2020 at 06:00 am., the ongoing expansion is put on pause due to “unfavorable market conditions”. In the worst case the expansion will remained paused until 29 October 2020 at 06:00 am., where the project terminates.

37% of the expansion has already been completed, meaning 443 GWh cushion gas has been injected creating an additional 295 GWh storage capacity for the storage customers participating in the expansion project.

While the expansion is stopped, GSD will monitor the development of the market prices in order to resume the expansion as soon as the market conditions allow it. The expansion is planned to last 120 days and, as mentioned above, will effectively end on 29 October 2020 at 06.:00 am.

In addition, it is important to note that due to the expansion, the current filling level shown on the diagram Storage Utilization and reported to AGSI+ appears to be approx. 10% higher than the case actually is as some of the already injected cushion gas is waiting to be transferred from the customers’ storage accounts to GSD. As long as the expansion is ongoing, the storage customers may use the diagram Expected Availability in order to follow GSD’s forecast for the activation of the injection restriction due to filling level above 95%. For the time being, GSD expects that the 95% filling level will be reached at the very end of October.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.