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Sovereign Independent UK -
Britain faces the prospect of gas rationing for the first time
Reserves have fallen so low they now stand at just 1.4 days of supply
Britain faces the prospect of gas rationing for the first time as a perfect storm of prolonged cold weather and disruptions to Norwegian supplies push the energy grid close to breaking point, experts warned.
Households and businesses have turned up the heating in recent weeks to keep warm in the unseasonably cold weather, running gas reserves so low that there is a very real prospect of running out in the coming weeks if the cold snap persists.
“If this dreadful weather continues for the next two or three weeks we should be very worried, because if we get into a position where we do run out of gas there is not a lot that can be done in the short term,” warned energy expert Ann Robinson.
“Rationing would be inevitable, for businesses and domestic users and maybe for gas-powered electricity producers as well, so we might be looking at electricity rationing too,” said Ms Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch, the energy consultant.
Although businesses would expect to bear the brunt of any rationing, households could also be implicated, experts said.
The Government was forced to issue a statement today strongly denying suggestions that Britain’s gas supplies are about to run out, after a series of concerning developments around the energy grid. As the cold weather continued to wreak havoc on the grid, the wholesale price of gas jumped by as much as 50 per cent at one point to a record 150p a therm after a water-pump failure forced the closure of a key import gas pipeline.
This problem, which was fixed by the afternoon, added to the pressure already on Britain’s gas reserves which have fallen so low they now stand at just 1.4 days of supply. To make matters worse heavy snow and high winds in Cumbria forced the Sellafield nuclear power plant to close and left more than 1,000 homes without electricity after the power lines came down.
Read More: sovereignindependentuk.co.uk
2013-03-24 06:18:23