Most of the oil and gas produced is taken ashore in pipelines north of Esbjerg. Most of the oil products for Danish consumption are refined in oil refineries at Kalundborg and Fredericia. Large underground storage facilities for natural gas to offset seasonal variations in use have been established in sandstone strata in Zealand and in a salt dome in Himmerland. The raw energy products are mainly used in the production of electricity and heating, and for transport. Electricity is mainly produced in regional power stations by burning coal supplemented with natural gas, oil, biological fuel and waste products.
Natural gas plays an increasingly important role, while the use of oil is decreasing.
Heating is mainly decentralised, being produced in the home, but the number of district heating stations is increasing. Oil-fired boilers in individual homes is the traditional Danish form of heating, but numbers are falling, and domestic heating is being replaced by district heating or natural gas. Only in rural districts outside the supply networks are oil-fired boilers included in plans for heating in the future. In the second half of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s natural gas pipes have been taken to most homes in the towns and to villages in the more densely populated areas. There is no obligation to be connected to the pipelines.