UK: National Grid to Withdraw Remaining LNG Stocks from Partington Facility

National Grid LNG Storage has announced it is to withdraw the remaining stocks of liquefied natural gas from its LNG storage facility at Partington near Manchester.

The volume of gas remaining at Partington represents only about one per cent of current GB storage stocks.

National Grid’s LNG storage business is not to be confused with its Grain LNG importation terminal in Kent.

Gas quality is constantly monitored at all three of National Grid’s LNG storage sites and it had been observed that the quality at Partington was declining faster than originally forecast.

The latest assessment of the quality of the LNG stock at Partington has shown that it will shortly be outside the gas quality limits that apply to gas intended for delivery to the GB gas network.

National Grid LNG Storage has therefore decided to withdraw the remaining stocks of LNG on Tuesday and Wednesday 8 and 9 March to prevent it becoming stranded in its storage tanks.

The decline in gas quality at Partington has mainly been because LNG had to be transported by road tanker from there during 2010 to maintain supplies of gas to customers in the Scottish Independent Undertakings (four remote towns in Scotland that are not directly connected to the gas transportation system) following operational issues at the Glenmavis facility. This reduced the stock levels held at Partington.

The Partington facility also had to be kept at a state of “short stand-by” for most of January and February 2011 in order to ensure that it could meet customer nominations during the peak winter period.

Both factors served to accelerate the normal ageing process associated with the storage of LNG.

Injection of fresh LNG was not possible because the outcome of an invitation to shippers in 2009 for expressions of interest in long term capacity at all three of National Grid’s LNG storage sites suggested the shippers did not place sufficient value on the facilities to justify major investment in them by the company, and National Grid subsequently decommissioned the liquefaction equipment at Partington, along with two of the site’s four storage tanks.

National Grid LNG Storage is now in discussion with the affected customers at Partington on the implications of the withdrawal of the remaining stocks.

The volume of remaining gas being withdrawn from Partington is less than 13 million cubic metres, which represents about one per cent of current GB storage stocks and less than three per cent of peak day demand.

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Source: National Grid UK, March 8, 2011;