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BBL Company operates the pipeline, with Gasunie owning 75% of the shares and Fluxys the other 25%. Originally designed to transport gas from the Netherlands to Great Britain, the pipeline was upgraded to support physical reverse flow in 2019. BBL Company now switches the active physical flow direction (between forward and reverse modes) to align with seasonal and market conditions. The operator reports that this often looks like: a shift to reverse flow towards the end of winter or spring to help fulfil continental European demand for storage; and a switch back to forward flow (towards Bacton) ahead of winter. Earlier this year, for example, it switched from forward to reverse flow in February.
Over the pipeline’s 20 years of operation, Europe has seen declining indigenous gas production, changing import patterns, the rapid growth of LNG, Brexit, an energy crisis and a renewed focus on security of supply. By transforming from a one-way import route into a highly flexible, bi-directional energy highway, BBL has acted (and continues to act) as a vital safety valve balancing the energy systems of Great Britain and continental Europe.
Thousands of miles away (in very different circumstances, and on a vastly different scale) another safety valve has been in operation. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline (also known as Petroline) was built in the early 1980s during the Iran–Iraq War, to move crude from the Kingdom’s eastern producing region to the Red Sea coast. The pipeline provides an alternative export route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz: a piece of strategic redundancy whose importance becomes particularly apparent when established energy routes come under pressure.
The pipeline has lately been working as Saudi Arabia’s primary insurance policy against regional maritime blockades. Petroline has a capacity of up to 7 million bpd and, amid severe disruption to shipping through the Strait, had recently been transporting around 4 - 5 million bpd. However, in mid September, drone attacks damaged the pipeline and forced its shutdown, with Saudi Arabia attributing the strikes to Iran-aligned groups. Estimates of the likely duration of the outage have varied considerably: US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that he expected it to be measured in days, while other assessments have suggested repairs could take several weeks.
Infrastructure designed to provide resilience can itself become vulnerable, but that does not diminish the value of alternative routes. If anything, it demonstrates why having other options matters: when one route is constrained, the value of another becomes immediately apparent. When – as is happening at the moment – that alternative is also removed, the consequences of having fewer options become clearer still.
That thought extends beyond pipelines currently in operation. Elsewhere, there is renewed interest in the historic oil pipeline connection between Iraq and Syria, with plans being explored to rehabilitate a route that could once again give Iraqi crude access to the Mediterranean. Again, the circumstances are completely different, but the underlying point is interesting: infrastructure corridors can retain strategic value long after the political and energy landscape in which they were originally conceived has changed.
Which brings me back to BBL: Gasunie says that its work today involves maintaining and “futureproofing” existing infrastructure while developing new energy supplies for the future. Futureproofing is an interesting word in an industry in which predicting the future is notoriously difficult.
