How and why gas reserves in the EU have fallen to their lowest level in 15 years

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to RBC about the dynamics of gas reserves in the EU underground gas storage facilities and the prospects for passing the heating season in Europe.

The low level of reserves by the end of September was also due to the impact of excessively high spot prices during the summer period, which disrupted the economics of gas storage, Alexey Belogoryev noted. Traders’ incentives to inject gas decreased: companies risked purchasing it at high prices and then not receiving a sufficient premium when selling it in winter.

At the same time, in his opinion, the current season of gas injection in the European Union cannot be considered a clear failure. Since April 1, reserves have been increased by almost 45 billion cubic meters, which is 11% less than in 2025, but more than in 2023–2024, and almost at the same level as in 2021.

The rate of gas withdrawal from underground storage facilities depends crucially on temperature, so predicting it is extremely difficult, Belogoryev says. For example, from November 2024 to March 2025, gas extraction from European UGS was almost 42% higher than in the winter of 2023-2024. The expert considers such volatility to be the norm, not the exception.

"This is the whole risk of accumulating relatively low reserves: a warm winter can be passed without problems, but there is almost no safety margin in case of a cold winter," he says.

Belogoryev calls the entire crisis in the European gas market in 2026 a direct consequence of the severance of Russian-European gas ties. If Russian pipeline gas continued to flow to Europe, as it did before 2022, the crisis in the Persian Gulf would affect the EU only tangentially — through rising Asian spot prices (with high prices in Asia, LNG carriers are redirected there from the European market).

Therefore, the introduction of an embargo on Russian LNG from January 1, 2027 looks like a "sanctions feast during the plague" in the current conditions, the expert believes. This will be an additional factor in the growth of spot prices for TTF, but how much this will affect the market balance will depend on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and weather conditions. With a warm winter, it is quite realistic to finish the heating season with reserves in UGS at the level of 25-30% of the technical capacity. This means that history may repeat itself in 2027, especially since the transition to surplus in the LNG market is shifting to 2028 even after the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.