The head of the Federal Network Agency considers it likely that there will be regional bottlenecks in the gas supply as early as next winter. To prevent that, more gas would have to be imported next year.
The Federal Network Agency expects that there could be a gas shortage in Germany, at least regionally, next winter. “The restrictions would probably be temporary at first and can end again or occur several times,” said the head of the agency, Klaus Müller, T-Online. In that case, you have to ensure that gas is transported safely through the country. The scenario of a regional gas shortage is likely, said Müller.
“But maybe things are even going a little better,” said Müller. To do this, it would have to be ensured that gas imports will be larger in the coming year – for example because the two additional private liquid gas terminals are ready as early as possible or because Germany gets additional gas from France. “Then we could assume that we’ll be able to fill up our stores more quickly next summer.”
Müller considers it unlikely that the storage tanks will be almost completely filled before this winter. “In all our scenarios, we miss an average filling level of 95 percent by November 1. We will hardly be able to do that because individual storage facilities started from a very low filling level.”
According to legal requirements, the storage tanks must be 85 percent full from October and 95 percent full by November 1st. The filling of the storage facility is a building block to ensure that the gas flow does not dry up in Germany in the winter when Russian deliveries are further reduced or completely canceled. Other factors include gas deliveries from other countries, for example via LNG terminals, and savings in gas consumption of 15 to 20 percent.
