The Brits aren't the only European nation to find itself on the verge of a full-blown energy crisis.
On Thursday, French natural gas pipeline operator GRTgaz warned that French gas stockpiles are much lower at this point in the year than they have been during years past - and as a result, they run the risk of potentially being depleted before the winter is up, a disaster that could make last year's deep freeze in Texas look tame if a sudden cold snap sends demand soaring.
According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, France’s stockpiles were about 34% full as of Feb. 1, which is well below the five-year average of 42%. Inventories are now at the lowest seasonal level since 2018, when a brutal winter cold snap nicknamed "the Beast from the East" left French reserves standing at just 3% when the heating season was over.
"We’ll probably be close to zero toward the end of March, and we remain vigilant on that topic," GRTgaz chief Thierry Trouve said in a presentation in Paris Thursday.
It's the most precarious for French gas inventories since they arrived at their lowest seasonal level since 2018. Inventories are now at the lowest seasonal level since 2018, when the country ended the heating season with storage at a record-low of just 3%.
And gas prices are much higher today than they were back then.
Additionally, France's energy problems have been exacerbated by the lower-than-usual capacity at the country's nuclear power plants,some of which have been closed over safety fears as President Emmanuel Macron seeks to modernize France's nuclear power system.
As we have previously reported, this drawdown in nuclear capacity has raised the risk of rolling blackouts in France if struggles to compensate with LNG.
Finally, observers of British politics have something else to talk about besides 'Partygate'.
In an effort to stave off an epidemic of what one CNBC host called "energy poverty", Her Majesty's Government has subsidize the energy costs borne by millions of British households as decades of energy policies that overemphasized reliance on imported natural gas - prices of which have soared over the last year - in favor of dirtier, but abundant, sources like coal have brought the British economy to the brink of an energy crisis.
Energy bills are expected to drastically spike in the coming months after Ofgem, Britain’s energy sector regulator, announced on Thursday that it would be raising its price cap on household energy bills by 54% starting April 1, a record-breaking increase instituted to stop power utilities from sinking into bankruptcy in the face of surging LNG prices. That's on top of a 12% hike approved back in October.
The average household’s annual energy bill is currently between £1,277 ($1,730) and £1,370 in the UK, and the increase could saddle millions of families with enormously increased costs for heating and electricity.
As a result, HMG has decided to issue direct subsidies to the British people to prevent millions from being squeezed as a result of what have now been exposed as unwise energy policy decades in the making that has shifted Britain's reliance on abundant coal that's widely available within the UK to imports of the "cleaner" LNG.
Speaking before the House of Commons on Thursday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak proclaimed that "just as the government stood behind the British people through the pandemic...so we will help people deal with one of the biggest costs they now face – energy."
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