This paper studies the impact of a re in 2006 which removed the possibility of access to the Rough gas storage facilities covering over 80% of total UK storage, at a time when major withdrawals from storage would have likely taken place. Implicitly, it shows the value of such gas storage facilities, in a country with relatively little storage, where we might therefore see a considerable impact. We nd that the major effect on activity was through an increased sensitivity of supply to prices and an increased variance in this sensitivity, not through physical shortages of gas