BBL said Tuesday its quarterly auction of Interruptible Reverse Flow Services for UK-Netherlands gas transits begins today.
IRF is to be offered for Q2 2011, operator BBL said in a statement.
"The auction period starts today at 12:00 hrs and will last a week until Tuesday 1st March 12:00 hrs," the operator said.
The services were used for the first time in January 2011. In the auction for March 2011 all offered IRF volume was sold out.
The IRF service allows gas transport to be booked from the UK to the Netherlands. This is not a physical gas flow but an "administrative" gas flow, with the capacity booked from England to the Netherlands deducted from the physical gas flow from the Netherlands to England.
"This adds a new option to the gas roundabout of northwest Europe, enabling shippers to balance gas flows to and from the UK better," BBL said.
BBL Company was set up in 2004 to build and operate the BBL gas transmission pipeline from Balgzand in the Netherlands to Bacton in the UK.
It is owned by Gasunie (60%), E.ON Ruhrgas (20%) and Fluxys (20%).
