The filling level of German natural gas storage facilities is about to fall below the 30 percent mark – that’s 23 percentage points less than at the same time last year. Depending on weather developments, the storage facilities could be largely empty by the end of the heating seasonfueling the debate about a strategic national natural gas reserve. Although Germany has the largest natural gas storage facilities of all European countries, companies are currently managing these capacities according to economic criteria, not from the perspective of strategic crisis prevention.
The currently very low filling level of the four dozen German gas storage facilities has two main reasons. On the one hand, Germany started the cold season on November 1st with only 75 percent storage capacity – in contrast to 98 percent the year before. On the other hand, consumption was high due to the weather, including for electricity generation: the public gas power plants in Germany generated electricity in January – due to the cold and often low contributions from renewable energies – in a quantity greater than in any other month in the last ten years.
This development is now shocking politicians and the energy industry: suddenly the idea of a state-regulated gas reserve is becoming popular among those involved. This has long existed for petroleum, supported by the Petroleum Storage Association (EBV), which was founded in 1978 and is under the supervision of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The EBV must at all times have enough petroleum and petroleum products in reserve to be able to compensate for a complete loss of all imports for three months – i.e. around 15 million tonnes of crude oil and 9.5 million tonnes of finished petroleum products.
So now the same thing for natural gas? Klaus Müller, head of the Federal Network Agency, welcomed a discussion about a strategic gas reserve “because we should also protect against disruptive events”. Corresponding suggestions are also already coming from the energy industry: “To protect against an acute crisis and unexpected external shocks, the creation of a storage reserve is a useful instrument,” said Kerstin Andreae, Managing Director of the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW).
Doubts about the current regime
Stefan Dohler, CEO of the gas supplier EWE in Oldenburg, even commented in detail on social media: “A decision must be made by the summer of 2026 on how Germany will secure its gas supply in the future.” The current regime no longer works.
In the past, gas suppliers were able to purchase and store cheap natural gas in the summer, because Russia in particular delivered continuously. This so-called summer-winter spread made the approach attractive, and so the storage facilities were always well filled in autumn. That has now changed. “Last summer there were hardly any price signals in the market to fill the storage tanks,” wrote Dohler. This is “not a theoretical problem – this is a real risk for next winter.”
A sufficiently large strategic gas reserve, which the state creates and only releases in the event of a physical bottleneck, could come into play here. One option is to commission a state-controlled actor to store a defined amount of natural gas in existing storage facilities. This would be easily possible because the storage operators are pure service providers for the gas industry; they act independently on behalf of the storing companies.
Such an actor on behalf of the state could be Trading Hub Europe (THE), an existing association of German gas network companies. THE could book capacity for basic filling, which the gas industry can only use if politics allows this in a crisis situation. Ideally, such a reserve would not be touched for years.
Austria as a role model
Austria is considered a prime example of such a reserve in Europe, as it has a specifically created and state-controlled reserve of natural gas. Since November 2022 this has been 20 terawatt hours (i.e. 20 billion kilowatt hours). In comparison to the number of inhabitants, Germany would have to have around 180 terawatt hours of strategic reserve. But that would be hardly conceivable at this level, as the total storage capacity in Germany is around 250 terawatt hours.
Italy and Hungary also have strategic natural gas reserves. Likewise, France has a reserve; The natural gas storage facilities there have been regulated by the CRE, the Commission de régulation de l’énergie, since 2018. This allows the government to set a minimum level of capacity that gas companies must book in storage.
How a strategic gas reserve could be created in Germany remains unclear for the time being. When asked, the Federal Network Agency does not currently want to take a position on “possible design options”. The BDEW expressed itself in a similarly vague manner. All actors are just letting it be known that they welcome the debate on the topic.