French gas grid operator Natran's network faced congestion issues on Wednesday, leading to the cancellation of all auctions at three interconnection points, according to urgent market messages published on the Entso-G platform on Wednesday morning.
The cancellation affected exit capacity at the Virtualys, Oltingue and Obergailbach interconnection points to Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, respectively, as well as exit capacity to the Serene Atlantique storage site and to distribution grids.
The transmission issues within Natran's network follow a leak on the Rhone artery gas pipeline on 26 September. The leak forced the firm to halve available entry capacity at the pipeline, which connects the Fos LNG terminals to the grid, and to suspend monthly firm capacity auctions for December-March at the Pirineos and Oltingue points.
A rise in consumption in French local distribution zones and the need to ship gas to the north of the country have put a strain on the domestic network.
French aggregate demand jumped to 1.55TWh on Tuesday — from 1.3TWh a day earlier and 950 GWh/d the previous week — as a cold spell boosted heating consumption. Temperatures were forecast to be lower on Wednesday, which may lift demand further.
Rising demand has coincided with a contraction in Norwegian gas flows to the Dunkirk receiving point owing to a mix of planned and unplanned works at Norwegian upstream assets. Imports at Dunkirk were nominated at 246GWh on Wednesday, down from 288GWh on Tuesday and 481 GWh/d the previous seven days.
Gas started flowing north from Terega's network into Natran's on Tuesday, after pointing south since 24 October, to compensate for the weak Norwegian flows and to satisfy demand in the north of the country and from neighbouring markets.
And overnight lows in Paris were on Wednesday forecast to fall to minus 1.6°C — 5.8°C below the norm — on 20-22 November from the 2.6°C projected for today, while ongoing works are poised to continue to limit Norwegian exports over the next two days.
Firms are likely to reduce Norwegian exports to France since the Peg day-ahead market at present holds firmly below other hubs that Norway can deliver to.
