Do high winds cause significant delays to LNG deliveries into European ports?

  • April 2026
  • Energy Markets

Do high winds cause significant delays to LNG deliveries into European ports?

Ports close when there is a risk of damage from ships being blown onshore, and so high winds can cause delays for LNG deliveries.  Delivery schedules usually have some flexibility, but longer delays of  more than 24 hours could have (gas and power) pricing impacts.  Ports used by LNG ships have varying wind speed limits: the most common is 25kts (approx. 29mph or 46 km/h) which we use here to define high wind.

  • How common are high winds, and what’s their duration? 
  • Is there a pattern across seasons as to when high winds occur? 
  • What causes longer periods of high winds?

We consider 3 European LNG ports, whose locations are shown in Figure 1.

  • Milford Haven (which includes Dragon and South Hook) in Wales, GB
  • Fos Cavaou in southern France, and
  • A Coruña Mugardos in western Spain

Figure 1: The locations of Milford Haven, A Coruña Mugardos, and Fos Cavaou LNG ports
Source: Map data from EuroGeographics, created in QGIS

How common are high winds, and what’s their duration?

Figure 2: Bar chart showing distribution of high wind duration by port
Source: ERA5 data from Copernicus

For all 3 ports short durations of high wind are significantly more common than long durations, as showing in figure 2.  The longest lasting period of high wind occurred at Milford Haven in February 2020, and lasted 69 hours.  Defining a high wind event as a period of continuous hours with the wind > 25kts, table 1 shows the proportion of events lasting > 12 hours and > 24 hours.  Stress testing, by changing the limit to >20kts to define high wind, yields similar results.

Table 1: The proportion of high wind speed events lasting >12 and >24 hours

             

Is there a pattern across seasons as to when high winds occur? 

Wind speeds >25kts are most common in winter, and least common in summer, as shown in figure 3. For events of duration over 24 hours, the proportions change to 60% or higher in winter, and none in summer.

Figure 3: Pie charts showing the proportions of events across the seasons for (upper) all high wind events and (lower) high wind events > 24 hours.

The risk of wind significantly disrupting the transportation of LNG is highest in winter, possible but less frequent in spring and autumn, and (very) unlikely in summer.

What causes longer periods of high winds?

The most common cause for high winds is a strong low pressure system, sometimes with other low pressure systems arriving in advance or following.

For the sites where the dominant wind direction is from the Atlantic (Milford Haven and A Coruña), all but 2 wind speed events lasting >24 hours were a result of strong low pressure systems (with centres at or below a specific threshold, not disclosed here). 68% of these were also named storms.

For Fos Cavaou in the Mediterranean some are due to strong low pressure systems.  We also see a different cause: 40% of long-lasting high winds were due to the local wind phenomena of ‘Mistral’ and ‘Sirocco’.  This also explains Fos Cavaou having a more even spread between the seasons.

Conclusions

Delays to LNG transport into European ports from high winds are most likely to occur in winter. For Atlantic facing ports, a strong low pressure with centre at or below a specific threshold (not disclosed here) makes delays of more than 24 hours likely.  For sites in the Mediterranean, local phenomenon can also produce long lasting, disruptive high winds without a strong low pressure.

Lake Street forecast likely LNG port disruptions, to help our clients work with the weather.