The European Union manages to fill its gas reserves to 80%

The European Union (EU) gas supply passed an 80% fill rate on Wednesday, the reference threshold the bloc had set to ensure a certain level of supply in the fall and winter, especially if Russia cuts your supplies completely.

Data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), the association that represents the gas sector to the EU institutions, indicates that Member States’ warehouses reached 80.17% on 29 August (last date with data).

This means that the 160 installations of the 18 community partners with gas reserves on their territory contain a total of 890 terawatt hours (TWh) of gas, half of the gas the EU buys from Moscow every year.

Even completely filling all reserves with some 1,100 TWh would be insufficient to cope with a total gas cut by the Kremlin: the bloc imported some 1,800 TWh from Russia in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. , according to the think tank Bruegel.

So far, Moscow has completely or partially cut off gas flows to 12 Member States and Germany fears it will permanently shut down the Nord Stream 1 tap, which is already pumping at much less capacity than it currently has (some 230 million cubic meters per week versus the 1.2 billion it used to carry, Bruegel calculates).

In addition, Russian energy giant Gazprom on Tuesday announced a reduction in gas flows to French company Engie, a cut that adds to the already reduced supply in recent months.

complete gas failure

It was precisely the fear of a total shutdown that led the European Commission to propose regulations requiring member states to fill 80% of their gas stocks by November 1 this year and 90% by the same date from 2023.

To date, three of the five countries with the largest gas storage capacity have already exceeded the 80% level: Germany has its reserves at 83.65% (204 TWh), the French at 91.54% (120 TWh) and Italy at 81.93% (158 TWh).

The reserves of the Netherlands and Austria, the other two major gas reserves in the European Union, currently stand at 77.03% and 66.06% and have not yet reached 80% Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia.

The Spanish state, which in negotiations ensured that the reserves of liquefied natural gas (LNG) were also taken into account when calculating the storage level, has its gas reserves at 84.37% (29.7 TWh).

Community rules do not require Member States to have gas reserves, unlike what happens with oil, where it is required to hold reserves equivalent to 90 days of consumption.

With regard to the nine community partners that do not have gas storage facilities (Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia), the regulations oblige them to ensure that a neighboring country has at least an equivalent of 15% of the annual hydrocarbon consumption.

exorbitant prices

The storage of gas by the Member States also takes place in a context where the price of this raw material has reached an unprecedented level.

The benchmark for future gas prices, the TTF of the Netherlands, closed this Tuesday at approximately EUR 253 per megawatt/hour, a relief from EUR 340 last Friday, but almost nine times more than the price at the end of August 2021 (EUR 29 per megawatt hour). MWh).

This has accelerated movements in European capitals, especially in Germany, which refused to intervene in the electricity market until last weekend, when it gave its blessing to decouple the price of gas from that of electricity.

European Commission President Úrsula von der Leyen, taking over from her country’s government, recently promised an “emergency intervention”, which will be ready in a few weeks, and a “structural” reform of the system by the start. from 2023.

The EU is fighting hard to minimize fossil fuel imports to Russia, reduce consumption and diversify suppliers, but it is also forced to act to halt exorbitant gas prices.