Page 14 - EurOil Week 40 2021

EurOil POLICY EurOil

Germany merges gas hubs

GERMANY GERMANY has launched a new national gas amount of gas entering the system matches the
trading hub called Trading Hub Europe (THE) amount that leaves it. The hub will be managed
It was announced on October 1, after merging two earlier hubs in by Germany’s energy regulator.
that the two previous an effort to boost liquidity and cut administra- Prior to the merger, Gaspool and NCG were
hubs, Gaspool and tion costs. already among Europe’s largest gas hubs after the
NetConnect Germany It was announced that the two previous hubs, Dutch TTF and UK NBP markets. Other major
(NCG), would be Gaspool and NetConnect Germany (NCG), hubs are found in Italy, France, Belgium, Austria
brought together back would be brought together back in April. Their and Spain.
in April. operators said at the time that THE would “ben- The overall amount of gas that was traded in
efit shippers and end-users, network operators Europe was worth nearly $790bn in 2020, with
and balancing group managers alike.” more than 70,512 TWh of supplies bought and
“Due to its central location in the heart of sold, according to UK research firm Prospex.
Europe, the new Germany-wide market area will Almost 90% of the volumes traded at NCG
act as an international hub linking other Euro- and Gaspool were over-the-counter, while the
pean gas markets,” they said. remainder were traded on exchanges.
THE covers 40,000 km of pipelines linking Online energy trading platform EEX, which
more than 700 distribution networks in Ger- mainly deals with power trades, said separately
many, which is the biggest gas consumer and last week that it was aligning its trading with
importer in Europe. Gaspool and NCG previ- THE for existing gas products. It will introduce
ously worked in different regions of the country. 13 new gas quality-specific products for supply
THE will also feature system upgrades offer- in various German regions and THE’s spot mar-
ing more security gas supply through stand- ket, and will make both physical gas futures and
ardised services, by ensuring that the overall new financial gas futures available. ™

PROJECTS & COMPANIES

Wintershall Dea researches CO2

transport using gas pipes

GERMANY WINTERSHALL Dea is undertaking research and affordable technology for decarbonisation.”
into how some of its vast network of natural gas Wintershall Dea is striving to bring down its
Wintershall Dea is pipelines in the Dutch North Sea could be repur- Scope 1 and 2 emissions to net zero by 2030, by
striving to bring down posed for liquid CO2 transport. increasing its use of renewable power and taking
its Scope 1 and 2 The German gas supplier said on September early positions in turquoise hydrogen and car-
emissions to zero by 30 it had joined forces with the OTH Regensburg bon capture and storage (CCS). But these targets
2023. University of Applied Sciences to carry out a fea- have not swayed some environmentalists, which
sibility study into the proposal. There are more recently sent a cease-and-desist order to the
than 4,800 km of gas pipelines in the southern company, demanding that it step up its climate
North Sea, and 1,200 km are controlled by Win- commitments.
tershall Noordzee, Wintershall Dea’s 50:50 joint Wintershall Dea’s Noordze joint venture with
venture with Russia’s Gazprom. The company Gazprom controls 19 production facilities in the
also has depleted gas reservoirs that could serve Dutch, UK, German and Danish sections of the
as CO2 storage sites. It estimates that the Dutch North Sea. It launched its latest new field there,
North Sea alone could store 800mn tonnes of Sillimanite South, in January.
CO2 – equivalent to three decades of emissions Last month Wintershall Noordzee launched
from the country’s industry. a decommissioning programme in the southern
“We are optimistic about the further inves- North Sea. The first part will run for around a
tigations. Our calculations already show that year and a half, and result in the plugging and
existing offshore pipelines could be well suited abandonment of 24 wells in both Dutch and
for transporting liquid CO2,” Wintershall Dea German waters. Swift Drilling was handed a
said in a statement. “Wintershall Dea is investing contract to carry out the work using a jack-up
in CCS because we are convinced that it is a safe rig. ™

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 40 07•October•2021