Centrica to close Rough storage facility

UK’s Centrica said it intends to permanently close operations at the Rough natural gas storage facility following the completion of a testing program. 

The company has also completed a review of the feasibility of returning Rough to injection and storage operations and concluded that, as a result of the high operating pressures involved, and the fact that the wells and facilities are at the end of their design life and have suffered a number of different failure modes while testing, Centrica cannot safely return the assets and facilities to injection and storage operations.

An additional assessment of both the economics of seasonal storage and the costs of refurbishment or rebuilding the facility and replacing the wells, suggests that both pathways would not be economic, Centrica said.

As a consequence, Centrica plans to permanently end Rough’s status as a storage facility and to produce all recoverable cushion gas from the field, which is estimated at 183 bcf.