(Alliance News) - Snam Spa reported Tuesday that natural gas stocks as of Dec. 31, 2022 in the storage facilities of its subsidiary Stogit amounted to 9.3 billion cubic meters, plus 4.5 billion cubic meters of strategic storage.

This is about 2.6 billion more than the storage of 6.7 billion cubic meters recorded at the end of December 2021.

In percentage terms, the fill rate is about 84 percent compared to 68 percent a year earlier. Seventy percent of the gas volume is in the Po Valley sites while the remaining 30 percent is in the Abruzzo Fiume Treste field.

"In view of the continuation of the winter season, this is a very positive result, made possible not only by favorable weather conditions and the National Plan to contain consumption but determined and supported by the actions implemented by Snam to optimize flow management," the company explained in a note.

"In particular, based on the preliminary data for last December, gas consumption in the fourth quarter of 2022 was around 16.9 billion cubic meters, a saving of 5.6 billion cubic meters compared to 22.5 billion cubic meters in the corresponding quarter of 2021. This outcome should also be attributed to lower industrial demand and the switch of some utilities to alternative fuels to natural gas."

"A new counter-flow storage service was launched at the beginning of last November, offering users injection capacity of up to 600 million cubic meters in the November-December period, with disbursement to be carried out in the January-March 2023 quarter."

Snam ended Tuesday in the green by 0.9 percent at EUR4.66 per share.

By Claudia Cavaliere, Alliance News reporter

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