On Thursday 7 April the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) published a report setting out the current gas storage situation in the European Union, based on information provided by the national regulatory authorities (NRAs).
The paper shows, among other things, that EU storage capacity is spread across 18 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden) and accounts for around 27% of the Union’s annual gas consumption.
The nine Member States without storage capacity account for less than 5% of this annual consumption.
The report also points out that as of 1 October 2021, the booked storage capacity in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovakia was significantly higher than the capacity actually used due to the low filling level of storage used or controlled by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
In addition, the type of storage regulation varies between Member States. Eleven EU countries have opted for third-party access rules and regulated tariffs, while in the others, storage access is negotiated between users and operators according to transparent and non-discriminatory rules.
Only four Member States (Italy, Portugal, Sweden and Hungary for part of its capacity) have strategic storage.
The report comes after the European Commission presented a proposal for a gas storage regulation on 23 March to prepare the EU for the coming winter if Russian gas supplies are reduced or stopped.
In particular, it requires EU countries to ensure that underground gas storage facilities on their territory are filled to at least 80% of their capacity by 1 November 2022, and 90% in subsequent years, by assigning them filling trajectories (see EUROPE 12917/7).
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/16t (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)