The head of Gazprom: Europe does not understand what problems it has with gas reserves

In Europe, they do not realize the scale of the problem with pumping gas into underground storage facilities. This was stated by the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller.

" According to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) as of August 31, that is, for five months of gas injection into European underground storage facilities (UGS), only 2/3 of the volume of gas taken from them last winter has been replenished. The gap between the volume selected and pumped (as of August 31) is significant — 18.9 billion cubic meters, the second largest on this date in the history of observations," Gazprom reports.

The head of the company, Alexey Miller, believes that Europe still does not realize the scale of the problem with gas injection into UGS.

"The current dynamics of injection suggests that it will be difficult for individual European countries to achieve the target of 90% of UGS occupancy. For example, Germany and the Netherlands, which are among the top five countries with the largest storage capacity in Europe. Currently, Germany's storages are filled by only 71.1%, the Netherlands — by 64.8%. This creates serious risks of gas shortage in the event of severe or prolonged cold weather," said Alexey Miller.

In his opinion, the problem of the regional gas balance in the The Baltic States.

"The Inchukalnskoye UGS, the only one in the region, is only half full, and the average daily gas injection into the storage facility is at a historically low level. That is, preparations for winter have actually been disrupted," the head of Gazprom added, noting that the season of gas extraction from storage facilities in Europe often has to start as early as the first half of October: "There is less and less time to somehow fix the situation."

As reported by EADaily , the countries The EU took away much larger volumes during the last heating season than during the previous two warm winters. At the same time, the European Commission lowered the mandatory limit for filling UGS from 90% by October to 83% from September to December. Brussels was motivated by the fact that a more flexible system would avoid speculative gas price increases.

At the same time, the issue of free volumes of fuel does not go away, since storage facilities are one of the main sources of gas in winter. Obviously, the EU expects that new projects in the US will continue to increase production and the deficit can be compensated by increased current imports.