More than 100 of the UK’s biggest gas consumers were subjected to rationing yesterday when an emergency alert warned of shortages caused by record demand and inadequate reserves.

While the National Grid said the number of firms told to turn off their gas would be reduced to 27 today, The Herald understands some Scottish firms are already reeling from the disruption of yesterday’s measures.

The latest impact of the coldest winter for nearly half a century comes as the Arctic temperatures gripping Britain show no signs of easing off over the weekend.

Figures released yesterday showed more than 20 people have died in weather-related incidents since the cold snap started last month.

The scale of the white-out has been illustrated by scientists at the University of Dundee, who used satellite receiving equipment to produce a UK-wide map showing the entire island of Britain covered by snow and ice. Temperatures going into the weekend are expected to drop as low as -20˚C in parts of the country, making this the coldest winter Scotland has seen in nearly 50 years.

Forecasters have said the bitterly cold weather will continue for at least another 10 days.

The latest gas supply shock was prompted by the failure of a Norwegian gas platform in the North Sea, which restricted supply at a time when consumers were demanding more gas than ever before to heat their freezing homes and prevent pipes bursting. Though domestic consumption is relatively low, gas accounts for about 40% of the UK’s electricity generation, and the cold weather has caused alarming spikes in demand across the board.

Even customers who did not face cuts suffered from higher wholesale prices sparked by the spiralling demand and the volatility in the market will ultimately be passed on to customers in the form of higher bills.

The Herald has been told by industry figures that areas such as paper production and petrochemicals are likely to be affected, though businesses have been reluctant to confirm their own arrangements.

Nearly 100 customers had supplies shut off in north-west England and the East Midlands, the National Grid said, but officials were cautiously optimistic that service would return to normal today, barring further unexpected shocks.

The disruption is the worst in more than a decade and manufacturing groups said the situation would be worse still if the recession had not caused an underlying reduction in gas demand.

A spokesman for Scottish and Southern Energy, which maintains the grid in Scotland on the same basis as the National Grid south of the border, said he could not confirm which customers were on such contracts, although the number of firms affected is believed to be relatively small.

Mark Swift, a spokesman for industry consortium EEF, said: “As a nation, we’ve invested far less in infrastructure than other major economies and, as a point of principle, we should be asking ourselves whether that’s a position we really want to be in.

“Clearly, industry is in the firing line now. We’ve taken our security of supply for granted for a long time and the first serious bout of weather we get just highlights our vulnerability.”

Industry experts and opposition politicians have been warning for years that Britain is vulnerable to short-term gas supply shocks because it has relatively small reserves to use as back-up.

Gas storage facilities in the UK are chronically underfunded, critics say, and account for only about 5% of the country’s needs, compared to about 24% in France and 21% in Germany.

 

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