In a press release published on 21 August, the European Commission welcomed the fact that the EU had reached its target of filling gas storage facilities to 90% capacity, ten weeks ahead of the 1 November deadline.
According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, gas storage levels reached 1,025 TWh or 90.02% of storage capacity (just under 92 billion cubic metres of natural gas) on 19 August.
This result is comparable to last year’s, when the EU reached the 90% gas storage target on 18 August (see EUROPE 13234/12).
This binding target as well as intermediate targets for EU countries were set by the Gas Storage Regulation (EU/2022/1032) adopted in 2022 (see EUROPE 12917/7) in order to ensure the EU’s security of supply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, praised “our intensive work in the past two and a half years” and explained that the European Commission would continue to monitor the situation.
She also called for continued support for Ukraine, which is facing repeated attacks on its energy infrastructure.
By 19 August, the country had only reached 22.17% of its gas storage capacity.
To see updated data from Gas Infrastructure Europe: https://aeur.eu/f/d80 (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)