UK gas storage withdrawals hit a record high

Platts reported that new records were set for withdrawals of gas from UK storage on Wed 16 Jan 2013, as cold weather affected the entire country:

End-of-day nominations showed total withdrawals of 112 million cubic meters, of which 44 million cu m came from the UK's long-range storage facility, the Centrica-owned Rough, data from Platts' unit Bentek Energy showed.

"Clearly this was incentivized by bullish prices; it shows that the smaller facilities accounted for 61% of total activity including record withdrawals at Holford (18 million cu m), Aldbrough (16 million cu m) and Humbly Grove (7 million cu m)," Bentek said.

Looking at the figures, we're OK for now, but if it stays this cold for a couple of weeks, there may be problems. Hopefully it'll warm up soon!