Outages could drive renewed European gas price volatility

Europe is better prepared than last winter, but risks remain

Europe’s high LNG import volumes last winter “pushed assets to the limit... and we will have to catch up on maintenance”, says Arno Bux, chief commercial officer of Belgian gas transmission system operator Fluxys and president of Gas LNG Europe, part of industry association Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE). Speaking at the recent GIE conference in Riga, Bux warned that both import terminals “and also to some extent transport assets” were operating at or even above capacity. As a result, “there will be more unforeseen unavailability than in the past”, he says, adding that, while such outages “might not be an immediate or fundamental threat to security of supply”, they would “definitely contrib