Italy's Snam Hits Storage Record, Meets Gazprom
Italian national gas infrastructure operator Snam said April 4 that the volume withdrawn from its storage facilities this winter reached a new record.
About 10.6bn m3 gas were withdrawn from storage between November 1 2017 and March 31 2018, an increase of 0.8bn m3 compared to its previous record of 9.8bn m3 in 2014-2015 winter.
Snam operates storage and transmission in Italy but does not trade or supply gas, so must be act independently, without favouring particular customers. Russia though remains the main source of Italian gas imports; Gazprom said it supplied 23.8bn m3 there in 2017. Much of that transited Ukraine, a country where Snam is among European firms interested in jointly managing the gas transmission system.
That interest in Ukraine's gas transit system was not mentioned in a Gazprom communique April 4 describing the meeting that day in Moscow of its CEO Alexey Miller and Snam counterpart Marco Alvera. Both discussed “avenues for cooperation” according to Gazprom, which outlined its progress to date with the TurkStream project.
Gazprom's partners on TurkStream are Edison (EDF group) and Depa, but not Snam (which has an equity interest in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline venture). The first line of TurkStream’s two parallel lines, each of 15.75bn m3/yr capacity, is expected to be completed by May 10, 2018, according to Russian reports, with the overall project “55% complete.”
Alvera informed Miller about Snam's intention to contribute to the creation of new gas transportation routes in the Mediterranean countries, the Gazprom statement added. Snam did not release a statement.
As well as being Gazprom’s third-largest export market, Italy is also Europe’s largest consumer of natural gas as a vehicle fuel.
That explains why Gazprom board chairman Viktor Zubkov was in Turin, Italy on April 3 to meet representatives of the natural gas vehicle (NGV) sector, including Pierre Lahutte, brand president of Iveco, a leading Italian manufacturer of heavy road trucks based in the city.