in December it rose to 84% – Corriere.it

The threat of natural gas shortage in Italy due to the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is receding. Gas stocks at the end of December 2022 in fact reached 84% in our country, up 38% compared to the levels of 31 December 2021 which were at 68% (to which we must also add strategic storage). These are the data communicated by Snam which attribute this result to the effect of actions such as «last resort storage, winter counterflow, and infraday auctions».

In particular – explains a note from Snam – the stocks of natural gas at 31 December 2022 in the storages of the subsidiary Stogit amount to 9.3 billion cubic meters, to which must be added 4.5 billion cubic meters of strategic storage. This is approximately 2.6 billion more than the stock of 6.7 billion cubic meters recorded at the end of December 2021. 70% of the gas volume is found in the sites in the Po valley while the remaining 30% is in the field Abruzzo of Fiume Treste, in the province of Chieti.

“In view of the continuation of the winter season, this is a very positive result – explains Snam – made possible not only by the favorable weather conditions and by the National Consumption Containment Plan but determined and supported by the actions implemented” by Snam itself “to optimize flow management». In this context, Snam «contributed to the achievement of the results obtained in terms of reserves with multiple initiatives». At the beginning of last November “a new counter-flow storage service was launched – a method which provides for the accumulation of reserves even in the periods of the year intended for withdrawal – which has allowed users to be offered an injection capacity up to 600 million cubic meters in the November-December period, with supply expected in the January-March 2023 quarter. A service particularly appreciated by operators and assigned in full”. climate variability and the potential risks of gas supply interruptions, at the beginning of December Snam offered other services, with the aim of preserving as far as possible the quantities present in the Stogit storage system and with a view to facilitating the next injection campaign, which will probably have to pay for the lack of supplies from Russia. For this reason, in the first place, users were offered a storage service for the thermal year 2023-24 up to 500 million cubic metres, which has been fully allocated. In the fourth quarter, consumption savings amounted to 5.9 billion cubic metres.

The counterflow initiative was then repeated and extended for the month of January 2023 for another 500 million cubic metres. These volumes have been associated with capacity bookings and related withdrawal services for the coming winter November 2023-March 2024, which will thus be able to count on a broader starting point in the injection phase.

At the end of November – adds Snam – the regulator approved the proposal to amend the Stogit storage code, with particular reference to intraday products, i.e. an initiative which made it possible to complete the offer of short-term services by Stogit and which allowed further flexibility to optimize the management of gas volumes.