Britain imports nearly 60% of its gas and just struck a deal with Belgium to keep a cross-Channel pipeline running at full capacity this winter. The arrangement costs 10p a month per household — £1.19 a year — to pay Interconnector Limited, the Belgian pipeline owner, to maintain the compressors needed to shove large volumes of gas to Britain in a hurry. Without the deal, the company had warned it would cut capacity because the pipe saw little use last year. The scenario being insured against sounds remote but is catastrophic: a prolonged cold snap knocking out critical infrastructure like the two LNG import terminals at Milford Haven, forcing gas-fired power stations to run at full capacity to keep the lights on. Ofgem described the Belgian arrangement as "the only currently available intervention" addressing supply security for winter 2026/27 and the following four years. It was Belgium or nothing. Ofgem itself flagged the limits of the fix. The agreement "does not remove the need for further measures led by government that are likely to be required to support security of supply and wider gas system resilience over the medium and longer term." National Gas's Friday winter outlook report echoed the message: even as annual gas consumption drifts slightly downward, peak demand remains as high as ever because gas-fired generation must fill in when renewables output drops. The deeper structural problem is storage. Britain's gas storage capacity is skimpy by European standards, and every option on the table — Centrica's Rough facility in the North Sea (due to close next spring), dCarbonX's Bains development off north-west England, on-shore salt caverns, or German-style forward-buying deals on LNG — takes years to build. The National Energy System Operator warned almost a year ago of an "emerging risk to gas supply security" in 2030. The government promised to "do whatever it takes" but has delivered an interim response with no timetable and a final response not due until next year. The post-Jackdaw approval question is pointed: what is a realistic appraisal of how much gas will actually come from the North Sea, and what gap does that leave? The Jackdaw decision itself was delayed for years, a pattern that cannot repeat for storage infrastructure when the 2030 crunch date is fixed and approaching. Two institutions — Ofgem and National Gas — are now publicly telling the government the same thing: continued progress on reforming security of supply arrangements is vital. When both your regulator and your system operator are issuing the same warning in formal publications, the signal is not ambiguous. The arithmetic is simple. None of this infrastructure gets built quickly. The 2030 risk window is less than four years away. Every month of government deliberation compresses the construction timeline further, raising costs and raising the probability that Britain enters the 2030s with its gas security dependent on last-minute bilateral deals and good weather.
