Natural gas demand in Italy in March fell by almost 24% year on year to 6.026 billion cubic meters, gas and power exchange manager GME said Tuesday.
GME said power plant demand fell by 33% to 1.276 Bcm, one of the "strongest decreases ever recorded" due to the combined effect of "the phase of recession and the competition [coming] from renewables."
Heating demand also posted a reduction year on year, being down by 25% to 3.436 Bcm as temperatures in March had been generally warmer compared with the previous year, it said.
Industrial demand on the other hand was essentially stable (up 0.1%), standing at 1.2 Bcm in March.
On the supply side, national production was down by 8.5% year on year to 588 million cubic meters.
Imports also decreased by 17% to 4.452 Bcm.
The strongest fall was seen for Algerian gas imports through the Mazara del Vallo entry point, which fell by 66% to 557 million cu m.
Conversely, Russian gas imports through Tarvisio rose by 5.8% to 2.752 Bcm, imports from northern Europe were up by almost 100% to 386 million cu m and Libyan gas flows through Gela increased by 20% to 527 million cu m.
Output at the Cavarzere LNG terminal fell by 54.2% to 229 million cu m, while at the Panigaglia LNG terminal it stood at just 1 million cu m and at Livorno was at zero.
Storage withdrawals continued on March, with 1.053 Bcm taken out of storage, down by 44% year on year. Some 67 million cu m was also injected during the month.
GME said that at the end of March stocks of stored gas were 3.121 Bcm, up by 118% on the year, despite total allocated capacity being 9% lower than the previous year at 10.273 Bcm.
Some 4.6 TWh was exchanged on the regulated gas platforms, accounting for 7.2% of total demand. All volumes were exchanged on the session "G+1" of the gas balancing platform PB-gas, which settles the day after the balancing takes place, at the average price of Eur23.99/MWh.