Spanish LNG stocks barely 40% full at year-end

Three of Spain’s six LNG terminals will end the year with their storage tanks below one-third full, raising the potential for a price squeeze should demand be higher or supply lower than is currently anticipated.

Sagunto, Cartagena and Bilbao will respectively be 17%, 25%, and 31% full on 31 December, with the other three – Barcelona, Huelva and Reganosa 52%, 60% and 65%, according to predictions published by Spanish gas transmission system operator Enagas on Monday.

This will put overall fullness across the 3.3 million cubic metres (mcm) of LNG storage in Spain at below 41%.

By contrast, on 31 December 2014 four of Spain’s terminals were more than 67% full, with only Huelva being less than half full. Overall fullness across the six terminals was at 63% – more than 22 percentage points higher than is predicted for the end of this year.

Partially offsetting this is the expected arrival next month of 2.13mcm of LNG, up from the 1.63mcm that arrived in January 2015. However, one trader was doubtful that all the forecast volume would necessarily come.

Error in data

The situation is expected to improve gradually from 1 January at Barcelona and Huelva.

But ICIS has discovered an error in publicly available data pertaining to stocks at the Bilbao LNG terminal, although apparently not in private data available to shippers.

According to publicly-available Enagas predictions, stock levels at Bilbao will rise from 137,300 cubic metres (cbm) of LNG on 31 December (30.5% full) to 332,900cbm (74% full) a day later.

Currently, a 137,000cbm vessel is scheduled to discharge at the terminal on 1 January, but this would leave stock levels almost 59,000cbm short. Enagas did not respond to request for comment on this, but a spokeswoman for Bilbao terminal operator BBG confirmed the data was wrong and said the company would ask Enagas to correct it.

It is not clear whether the data fails to show another LNG vessel arriving or is simply wrong.

According to one trader, the error was not present on password-accessed data available to him as a shipper.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Bilbao data is open to question, the Bilbao, Sagunto and Ferrol LNG terminals will all be less than 25% full by the end of January, with Cartagena 35% full, the data shows.

Spanish AOC prices eased again on Monday with two prompt products trading at below €19/MWh for the first time in several weeks, as the market absorbed bearishness taking hold in the southern French TRS zone. Recent temperatures have been well above seasonal norms across Europe, and Iberia has not escaped this, with the trend set to continue for at least the next week, according to information from forecaster WSI on Tuesday.

On the supply side, Italian Eni recently declared a force majeure on exports of LNG from Nigeria owing to pipeline sabotage, although other stakeholders in the Nigeria LNG project have not yet done so. robert.songer@icis.com