Turkey’s BOTAS orders private power plants to curtail gas intake

Aura Sabadus

09-Jan-2015

The Turkish transmission system operator BOTAS has asked gas-fired power generators to halve their gas intake from Saturday morning to keep the system balanced amid surging demand from falling temperatures, sources told ICIS.

The curtailment order affects only private plants supplied by BOTAS and follows similar instructions issued earlier in the week to generators owned by the electricity incumbent EUAS or plants operating under the so-called build-own-operate, build-own-transfer (BO/BOT) formula. The total EUAS and BO/BOT capacity affected by the curtailment this week was 8.58GW, according to three sources.

ICIS could not establish the exact amount of private capacity supplied by BOTAS and affected by the curtailment order effective from Saturday.

A fourth source said electricity distribution companies may be applying shut-downs on a rolling basis.

“Our office is running on generators right now,” the source, whose firm operates a distribution company, said.

It was not immediately clear for how long the curtailment order to all private, EUAS and BO/BOT plants would be in place. Anecdotally, curtailments tend to extended to one week.

BOTAS declined to comment.

Prices fail to react

Despite the curtailment orders, the day-ahead natural gas price quoted to ICIS on Friday remained range-bound on the previous day’s assessment of TL835.00 per thousand standard cubic metres. The Saturday Baseload power price was Turkish lira (TL) 194.05/MWh (€71.79/MWh) from Friday’s TL186.59/MWh.

A source said natural gas and electricity prices failed to capture the fundamental changes in demand and supply because BOTAS had been reportedly trying to cap demand at a constant level throughout the week.

Three shippers said gas demand had spiked to around 240 million cubic metres (mcm) since Tuesday, some 45mcm more than what the transmission system is capable of transporting.

However, in order to keep flows under control, BOTAS issued an instruction to the state-owned and BO/BOT plants to reduce their gas consumption. Any remaining deficit between demand and supply after the curtailment of the capacity had been reportedly covered from linepack, which was at a record of 390mcm on Tuesday. A source said linepack had been decreasing by approximately 20mcm/day since then. A drop below 300mcm in linepack is deemed critical to the system.

Russian gas flows through the western Malkoclar entry point were fractionally above 45mcm/day on Thursday, according to data provided by Bulgarian system operator Bulgartransgaz. Two sources said flows from Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia via Blue Stream were also normal, although this could not be confirmed with BOTAS.

Turkey has experienced a cold spell since the beginning of the month with temperatures set to drop to -20ºC in central Turkey, according to weather forecasters WSI.

The weather is expected to warm up from Monday, particularly in the western part of the country around the Istanbul region. Aura Sabadus

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