Are we going to shiver this winter? France has filled 90.06% of its gas stocks for the winter period, according to the European platform AGSI, Thursday August 25. The government’s goal is to fill the country’s storage capacity with 100% natural gas by November, as the tap of Russian exports to Western countries that support Ukraine gradually dries up.
The Russian giant Gazprom has, since the start of the war in Ukraine, stopped gas deliveries to several European countries and drastically reduced its deliveries to Europe in June via the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Germany’s strategic storage facilities are 81.07% full according to the AGSI site. Besides France, only four European countries out of 27 are at more than 90%: Portugal (100%), Poland (99.56%), Sweden (90.8%) and Denmark (93.76%) .
All countries filled their tanks more than 50%, the worst off being Latvia (55%) and Bulgaria (59%). France, which claims to be in a more “favorable” situation than its neighbours, is counting on gas stocks filled to the maximum and on a new LNG terminal from next year to receive imports of liquefied gas from countries other than France. Russia.
The Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, had indicated during the summer that the government’s objective was to fill the stocks to 100% “before November 1”while operators are usually required to fill these reserves to 85% by this date.
Even if the gas reserves are 100% full, it will also be necessary to reduce its consumption in order to be able to survive the winter, both of gas and of electricity. On Wednesday, Germany enacted a series of measures: heating capped in administrations and public buildings, ban on night lighting of buildings, extinction of illuminated advertisements at night, or even heating of private swimming pools prohibited if it is connected to the public network.