The European Commission decided on Tuesday 12 July to confirm Dutch aid of €406.4 million to support the filling of the Bergermeer gas storage facility in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This will ensure that gas storage facilities in the country are filled to at least 80% of their capacity by 1 November 2022, thus complying with the gas storage level requirement of the recently adopted Gas Storage Regulation. The Netherlands needs to ensure the partial filling of the Bergermeer facility, a large seasonal storage facility for High Calorific gas.
The Bergermeer facility is different from other storage facilities in the Netherlands, which are used to store Low Calorific gas.
The aid will take the form of insurance against negative winter-summer gas price spreads. The aid will incentivise market participants to fill seasonal gas storages by covering (i) the costs of storing gas during summer for the winter season when the winter-summer gas spreads are too low to cover costs; and (ii) potential losses incurred in case of negative winter-summer gas price spreads. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)