Government determines the natural gas volume required in Inčukalns Underground Gas Storage

Today on 8 May the Cabinet of Ministers supported the amendments in “Procedure for supply of energy users and fuel selling in case of an announced energy crisis and national threats” anticipating the natural gas volume required in Inčukalns Underground Gas Storage (Inčukalns UGS) to reduce the risks related with natural gas supply.

The current edition of provisions prescribes the responsibility of the unified natural gas transmission and storage operator only for storing the natural gas security reserves for supply of the users to be provided, thus there is a risk to encounter essential natural gas deficiency in case of possible supply crisis during heating season.

The amendments in the provisions prescribe further that the obligation of the unified natural gas transmission and storage operator is to ensure that active natural gas volume not less than 300 million cubic metres for provision of natural gas supply of Latvia is stored in Inčukalns UGS from the end of natural gas pumping season of the relevant storage cycle till March 1 of the following calendar year to provide the required daily removal of natural gas from Inčukalns UGS in case of energy crisis.

The costs for provision of the required minimum natural gas volume to be stored included in the transmission tariffs of the unified natural gas transmission and storage operator are estimated at six million euro annually. When expressing these costs on the unit of the energy supplied to the Latvian natural gas market, the provision costs for the required minimum natural gas volume to be stored would be approximately 0.42 euro for a megawatt hour. EM stated that such influence of payment on the total energy unit supplied to the end consumption, e.g. group of inhabitants that use natural gas for heating would be ca. 1.2%.