Technical investments

Technical investments totalling €1,272 million (€1,313 million in 2014) referred mainly to the natural gas transportation (€693 million), distribution (€393 million) and storage (€170 million) business segments.

Infrastructure development and integration

The main investments for the development of new infrastructure mainly involved work for the reversal of physical transportation flows at interconnection points with northern Europe (€176 million), the upgrade of the transportation network from entry points in southern Italy (€63 million) and the upgrade of the network and connection of new regional and national redelivery points (€79 million). An investment of €76 million was made to develop new storage fields, while €41 million was invested to upgrade capacity. An investment of €89 million was made to extend distribution networks and €132 million was invested to improve service quality, enhancing the technology of metering activities by developing the remote reading system through the installation of digital meters.

As a result of the work completed and disposals, the pipeline network in operation grew by a total of 195 km (+0.6% compared with 31 December 2014), while installed capacity in compression stations dropped by 17 MW (-1.9%). Available storage capacity rose by 0.1 billion cubic metres to a level of 11.5 billion cubic metres.

Maintenance of plant security and quality

Investments in projects aimed at maintaining plant security and quality totalled €253 million for transportation and €53 million for storage, while €110 was spent on modernising the distribution network.

In 2015, pipelines were regularly inspected by foot, vehicle and helicopter to detect hazardous situations that could have had an impact on the integrity of the infrastructure, and an inspection was carried out on the pipeline conditions by inserting smart devices in them to detect any defects.

A major source of information on the status of the distribution network is provided by searching for leaks of gas into the atmosphere from street pipes. In 2015, around 27,000 km of the pipes of Italgas and its subsidiaries were inspected.

Operating review

Interconnected transportation-storage capacity and network utilisation

The average transportation capacity provided in 2015 was 371.6 million cubic metres/day on average, which was in line with 2014 (-0.6%), while transferred capacity totalled 293.8 million cubic metres/day on average. Network saturation⁸ was 79.1%, a decrease compared with 2014 (84.7%). The number of active transportation users rose from 134 in 2014 to 139 (+3.7%). During the year, 65 connection agreements were entered into for the creation of new delivery/redelivery points.

Overall storage capacity, including strategic storage, was 16.0 billion cubic metres at 31 December 2015, an increase of 0.1 billion cubic metres over 2014, of which 11.5 was available capacity that was fully transferred for the 2015-2016 thermal year, and the remaining 4.5 billion cubic metres was for strategic storage.

There were 118 active storage customers (107 in 2014; +10.3%).

Business volume

A total of 67.25 billion cubic metres of gas was injected into the transportation network, an increase of 5.00 billion cubic metres (+8.0%) compared with 2014. The increase was mainly due to the increase in demand for natural gas in Italy (+5.53 billion cubic metres compared with 2014; +8.9%), largely attributable to greater consumption in the thermoelectric (+16.8%) and residential and tertiary (+11.5%) sectors, partially offset by higher usage of storage facilities (-0.53 billion cubic metres).

The volume of gas moved through the storage system in 2015 totalled 19.58 billion cubic metres, an increase of 3.88 billion cubic metres (24.7%) on 2014. The increase was mainly attributable to higher withdrawals from storage (+2.17 billion cubic metres; +28.7%) due to substantial use of stocks by system operators, as well as to higher injections to replenish stocks (+1.71 billion cubic metres; +21.0%).

In 2015, the LNG terminal in Panigaglia (SP) regasified 0.03 billion cubic metres of natural gas (0.01 billion cubic metres in 2014). The LNG regasification activity was carried out in the context of the peak shaving service.

At 31 December 2015, Snam had concessions for gas distribution services in 1,472 municipalities (1,437 as at 31 December 2014), of which 1,401 had operational networks (1,361 as at 31 December 2014). It had 6.526 million active meters at gas redelivery points to end users (households, businesses, etc.), compared with 6.408 million at 31 December 2014 (+1.8%).

+5.00 billion m³ of gas injected into the network

+3.88 billion m³ of gas moved through the storage system

+118 thousands active meters