A Rough Analysis: Valuing Gas Storage

This paper studies the impact of a fire in 2006 which removed the possibility of access to the Rough gas storage facilities covering over 80% of total UK storage, at a time when major withdrawals from storage would have likely taken place. Implicitly, it shows the value of such gas storage facilities, in a country with relatively little storage, where we might therefore see a considerable impact. We find that the major effect on activity was through an increased sensitivity of supply to prices and an increased variance in this sensitivity, not through non-price rationing.