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Southern Corridor GRIP 2017–2026
Furthermore the present GRIP is providing a complete overview of the gas demand
trends in the past four years and those expected in the next ten years, analysing the
current situation characterised by a weak annual consumption (reflected also in a
decrease of successive forecasts). This dynamic is mainly due to the economic crisis
effects and to the substitution of gas in power generation by other sources, such as
coal and Renewable Energy Sources. At the same time the Region faces a general
decrease of average load factor while the peak requirements remain important.
Added to a higher intermittency of demand (RES-drive) the need for flexible
infrastructure is destined even to increase its importance.
On the supply side Southern Corridor Region faces probably the biggest challenge
across Europe. Projects planned in the Region are expected to enable a considerable
change of the supply patterns with positive impacts also for the Europe as a whole.
Such a change will be brought out by new sources of gas (Caspian and East-Mediterranean/Middle East) and new routes, first with TAP that entered in the
construction phase and with the other relevant projects described in the specific
section 6.1 “Key transmission projects of the Region”. Additional potential may be
represented by the Turkish Stream, expected to link Russia with the European part
of Turkey.
When assessing demand and supply of the Southern Corridor Region, the GRIP
gives us as clear message that they are balanced in the reference case scenario. On
the other hand, the Region is still vulnerable to disruption of the Ukrainian route,
while the FID projects help to satisfy part of the expected demand but are not suffi-
cient to fully mitigate the situation. Therefore, also some of the non-FID projects like
those that are aiming at the transmission of gas expected to be made available in
Turkey from various sources, are needed to ensure a complete redress. This again
proves that the Region has high dependence on Russian gas, although this is
expected to be reduced for some of the countries with the help of FID and PCI
projects. Among these projects, the ones that aim to bring to the Region’s market
new sources of indigenous gas, like gas from Cyprus and the Black sea are most
interesting since they will not be affected by any considerations external to the
Region.
As one of the main roles of TSOs is to reduce any possible bottlenecks at their IPs,
the GRIP also analyses congestion dynamics both from a physical and from a
contractual point of view. The findings are that no physical congestion appears in
any IP (with the exception of Mosonmagyaróvár) while contractual congestion is a
very limited phenomenon, expected to progressively improve with the implementation
of projects and the new CMP and CAM rules.
The TSOs of the Region hope that stakeholders will consider that the present report
is a valuable informative tool offering a comprehensive overview of the Southern
Corridor Region’s countries, projects, and gas market data.