Baltic TSOs offer additional Balticconnector capacity

Baltic transmission system operators (TSOs) have started to offer additional gas transport capacity to Finland from Estonia on the Balticconnector in excess of the baseline amount.

The dynamically-calculated capacity will be assessed every Thursday for a one-week period starting from the beginning of the gas day on Saturday to the following Friday, Gasgrid Finland said. This process, which began last week, will continue until further notice, the TSO said.

The extra capacity offering will require "tight regional cooperation where the flow dynamics and market behaviour in terms of gas transportation needs in [the] Baltic-Finnish region are considered", Gasgrid said. The offered capacity will be published on exchange GET Baltic's platform and updated on the Entso-G transparency platform.

The respective TSOs agreed to offer an additional 5.4GWh/d above the 54.6GWh/d baseline to Finland from Estonia for 24-31 December, increasing capacity in this direction to 60GWh/d.

Physical flows towards Finland in this period have so far not exceeded 16GWh/d.

Additionally, Gasgrid and Estonian TSO Elering have increased the Balticconnector's technical capacity towards Estonia to 78GWh/d from 16 January, the date a floating storage and regasification terminal (FSRU) is scheduled to start operating at Finland's Inkoo port. The laden 150,900m³ Exemplar FSRU arrived at Inkoo today.

By Brendan A'Hearn