New mobility for the underground gas storage in N. Kavala

Of Thanks to Floudopoulos

The amount of costs of the accompanying projects that should be implemented in the national natural gas system in Northern Greece, emerges as a critical factor for the viability of the project of creating a natural gas storage facility in the depleted field of South Kavala.

This emerges from the meeting held last week for the project, with the participation of RIS, RAE, DESFA and HRDH. The aim of the meeting was to clarify the landscape in terms of the required investments in the transmission system and which are related to the work of the warehouse.

According to information, at the meeting it was found that a significant part of the projects do not concern exclusively the warehouse but also other international infrastructures that are being built or will start to be developed in the area, such as the IGB pipeline and the FSRU of Alexandroupolis.

These projects create the need to upgrade the NSRF from Thessaloniki to Kipi anyway.

This means that investments to upgrade the NSRF should be addressed in the broader context of operation of all infrastructure implemented in Northern Greece.

Consequently, the costs for the works that have to be done exclusively for the integration of the warehouse in the system are sharply reduced.

According to information during the meeting, the representatives of DESFA argued that even if the percentage of socialization (ie the cost that will be passed on to consumers) is set at 100% and the worst case scenario is taken into account, ie not to use the warehouse by any user , the charge on the accounts in the regulated charges will not exceed 1%.

During the meeting, the representatives of DESFA presented an updated study, for YAFA, according to which the users of the warehouse will benefit significantly from taking advantage of the opportunities of price differentiation with the fuel storage in the low cost periods and the sale in the high price periods. . This means that users will have a strong financial incentive to utilize the infrastructure.

From the point of view of RAE, however, a critical parameter for the viability of the project is the need or not to create a second transmission pipeline for the smooth operation of the infrastructure.

If the construction of a second pipeline is needed, then the cost rises to 600-700 million euros and the warehouse is economically unprofitable according to the Regulator.

In any case, it is clear that the prospect of building an underground gas storage facility in N. Kavala has gained ground in the light of the current energy crisis, which has shown that Greece is one of the few countries in Europe that does not have gas storage infrastructure.

In this context, in addition to the economic and technical parameters, the implementation of the project has the dimension of security of energy supply.