By Ed Ballard
LONDON--Centrica PLC, one of the U.K.'s biggest energy
suppliers, has extended two gas supply agreements with Norway's
Statoil ASA and Russia's Gazprom OAO, underscoring the country's
reliance on imported energy.
Centrica, which owns British Gas, said Wednesday it extended an
agreement struck in 2011 with Statoil by 2.3 billion cubic meters
of gas per year. Over the course of the 10-year deal, which comes
into effect this year, 73 billion cubic meters, or bcm, will be
delivered, instead of 50 bcm.
A three-year supply deal that came into effect last year with
Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd., a U.K. subsidiary of the
state-owned gas giant, has been expanded from 2.4 bcm to 4.16 bcm
per year, and will now run until 2021.
"Britain needs around 70 bcm of natural gas each year to heat
homes and businesses and to generate electricity, and the U.K. now
needs to import more than half of this," Centrica said.
"The long-term supply agreements with Statoil and GM&T will
meet the gas needs of 9 million British homes every year and take
the total amount that Centrica has committed in securing gas and
electricity, through a range of suppliers, to over 50 billion
pounds [$78.3 billion]," the company added.
Write to Ed Ballard at ed.ballard@wsj.com