Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the cost and benefits to the consumer of gas storage provided by the Rough facility.

Centrica Storage Ltd’s decision to close the Rough gas storage facility is a commercial decision based on the age of the asset and the costs of repair. As such, we do not have the information to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of maintaining the gas storage facility at Rough.

However, we have recently undertaken a full strategic assessment of our long-term gas security, including scenarios without Rough. We will publish this in due course. The UK continues to be benefit from a range of flexible sources of natural gas, including: production from the North Sea; six international gas pipelines with Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands; three Liquefied Natural Gas terminals that can bring gas from anywhere in the world; and a number of modern, responsive gas storage facilities.