Disagreement on Malmbanan and criticism of electricity allocation
A few weeks ago, the business newspaper Dagens Industri accused the state-owned mining company LKAB of exploiting its position and discriminating against the future privately owned steel producer H2 Green Steel.
LKAB does not want to sell ore to the steel plant in Boden. This would be because LKAB is a major shareholder in SSAB, which in the Hybrit project in cooperation with LKAB and state-owned Vattenfall plans to produce steel with the same fossil-free technology as H2 Green Steel. H2 Green Steel has from the beginning expected to buy ore from LKAB. It is embarrassing that LKAB would rather sell ore to North Africa and the Middle East than to Boden, Dagens Industri wrote.
LKAB has referred to the fact that the capacity of the Malmbanan (the railway between the mines in Malmfälten and the shipping ports of Narvik in Norway and Luleå in Sweden) is not enough to deliver ore to another customer. The view of how much capacity there is on the Malmbanan differs. The Swedish Transport Administration claims that there is theoretical capacity for one more train per day on the ore line.
LKAB thinks this is nonsense in an article in DI, and CEO Jan Moström compares it to the traffic situation in Stockholm, where there is theoretical capacity in the road network to avoid traffic jams. In practice, it is not possible to guarantee more deliveries on Malmbanan today. LKAB points out that the company has long demanded a refurbishment and capacity increase on the Malmbanan, with double tracks between Luleå and Boden and preferably also between Gällivare and Kiruna.
If H2 Green Steel in Boden is under pressure when it comes to ore deliveries, it is on the other hand an advantage for the company when it comes to electricity deliveries.
Early on, even before the company's plans for a new steel plant were presented in early 2021, H2 Green Steel has secured sufficient supplies of electric power.
When Svenska Kraftnät and Vattenfall Eldistribution announced the allocation of power in Norrland in early June, Luleå and the planned industrial investments there were left without further allocation. All available power lines was already booked up.
Just over a week ago, representatives of SSAB, Uniper and Talga wrote a debate article in Dagens Industri. They say that the allocation of power has been done in the wrong way, which threatens several important investments in the north. That is, the planned investments in Luleå, where the three companys are working on.
They criticize a system where companies can book any amount of line capacity as long as they do it in time. It is first come, first served. Instead, applications should be needs-tested and societal benefits should be taken into account. It should be possible to allocate power on a piecemeal basis in order to avoid air in the system, which easily happens when grid capacity is overbooked for the sake of safety by those who are first in line.
Carina Sammeli, a municipal councillor in Luleå, also wrote in an opinion piece that the system should be redesigned.
In an article in Norr Media this week, Svenska kraftnät responded that the problem is not air in the system. And that it is difficult to make demands on reservations that are made. Who should value business ideas? Instead, Svenska kraftnät points out that electricity production needs to increase and transmission possibilities need to be expanded.
Most people agree on this: The basic problem is that the production of fossil-free electricity in Sweden is insufficient and that only one fifth of the transmission capacity in northern Sweden covers the need created by all planned investments.
In terms of electricity deliveries, H2 Green Steel has not only secured the capacity of the distribution system but also secured deliveries from two producers: Finnish Fortum and Norwegian Statkraft.
Lennart Håkansson
editor@northswedenbusiness.com
