A mild winter reduced withdrawals from natural gas storage
Published by Bella Weetch,
Editorial Assistant
Tanks and Terminals,
During this past winter heating season (1 Nov 2022 – 31 Mar 2023), the amount of natural gas withdrawn from underground storage in the US South Central storage region was among the least on record, at 239 billion ft3, according to the EIA's Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report. Winter heating degree days in the region were 10% below the 10-year (2013 – 2022) average, reducing the need to use natural gas inventories to meet heating demand. Regional natural gas consumption in the residential and commercial sectors was 12% below the five-winter average (from 2017 – 2018 to 2021 – 2022) this winter, according to data from S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Natural gas storage helps balance supply and demand in the US, particularly during the winter months when colder weather increases demand for heating, causing natural gas consumption to increase. In addition to mild temperatures and reduced demand, relatively high natural gas production contributed to fewer storage withdrawals than average in the region.
The US South Central storage region is home to several major natural gas-producing basins, including Haynesville, Permian, Woodford, Eagle Ford, and Barnett. In addition to greater-than-historical-average production, an extra 2 billion ft3/d of effective supply became available for US domestic consumption when the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas, US, shut down last summer.
The South Central region is the largest US storage region, with 1550 billion ft3/d of underground storage design capacity. Salt cavern facilities make up nearly 30% of working storage capacity in the region and can be used to meet demand in sudden colder temperatures, giving the South Central storage region more flexibility than other storage regions.
The South Central storage region has the greatest maximum natural gas withdrawal deliverability (51.8 billion ft3/d) of any storage region. Maximum withdrawals in the other four US storage regions range from 4.3 billion ft3/d to 28.2 billion ft3/d, according to the EIA's survey data. As a result, colder-than-normal winter temperatures in the South Central region typically result in large net withdrawals of natural gas from storage. However, due to above-normal temperatures in the region, large net withdrawals from storage in the South Central storage region were uncommon this winter.
Read the article online at: https://www.tanksterminals.com/storage-tanks/02052023/a-mild-winter-reduced-withdrawals-from-natural-gas-storage/
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