Bulgaria’s natural gas transmission system operator Bulgartransgaz decided to take measures to provide incentives for use of the Chiren underground gas storage (UGS), in order to achieve a higher level of filling and thus improve the security of gas supplies in the winter of 2022-2023.
Upon Bulgatransgaz’s proposal, a market measure was taken to stimulate natural gas storage, by setting zero access prices for the entry and exit points from/to the gas storage for the gas year 2022/2023, as of 1 October 2022. In this regard, auctions for the transmission capacity to entry-exit point Chiren UGS will no longer be conducted and the entry capacity will be allocated based on the allocated withdrawal capacity while the exit capacity will be allocated based on the allocated injection capacity.
In addition, in order to achieve a higher level of filling of Chiren UGS during the injection period and to improve the usability of the available storage capacity, as of 18 August, four additional storage capacity auctions shall be added within the current gas month together with the existing auctions for storage capacity conducted on the Regional Booking Platform (RBP) prior to the storage month.
