Centrica Acquires Onshore Gas Storage Project

Centrica PLC
                  Centrica plc, the parent company of British Gas, today announced its second
significant gas storage project this year, the acquisition of Caythorpe Gas
Storage Limited (CGSL) from Warwick Energy for £70 million in cash.

CGSL owns the onshore Caythorpe gas producing field near Bridlington in East
Yorkshire, which is a substantially depleted onshore gas field located close to
the National Transmission System.

Caythorpe has planning permission for conversion to an onshore gas storage
facility with a capacity of up to 7.5 billion cubic feet [bcf] of gas. The
project would require additional capital investment of around £100 million and
could be operational by the winter of 2011/12.

Caythorpe will have a much faster injection and withdrawal rate than Centrica's
Rough gas storage facility, which is offshore from Easington.

Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, said: 'With the UK rapidly becoming
more dependent on imported gas, increasing the country's gas storage capacity is
an essential element in giving our customers security of supply. Caythorpe adds
to Centrica's existing investment programme, giving us more flexibility in our
storage portfolio with its faster injection and withdrawal rates.'

Caythorpe is the second significant storage investment project to be announced
this year by Centrica. In March Centrica, together with its partners, announced
a development study aimed at converting the largely depleted Bains gas field,
near to Morecambe Bay, into a facility with potentially up to 20bcf of storage
capacity. Rough, the UK's biggest gas storage facility with approximately 118bcf
of capacity, was acquired by Centrica in 2002.

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Enquiries:

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Note to editors:

The UK currently has enough gas storage to cover only approximately 5% of
average annual gas demand, or around 16 days of average demand. This compares
with 24%, or 88 days, in France and 21%, or 77 days, in Germany.