The German government will go ahead with a planned 24 terawatt hour crisis gas reserve funded by user surcharges, the economy ministry said on Wednesday, following criticism over missed storage targets for this winter’s heating season. The state buffer amounts to about 10 percent of the nation’s gas storage capacity and will be accumulated over up to three years.
The ministry was explicit that the reserve does not displace the market. It is meant to address severe disruptions, for example acts of sabotage, and does not replace the private sector’s seasonal stock keeping duties. Market participants keep their responsibilities, including winter preparedness and meeting supply obligations, the ministry said. Households would likely face gas prices 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent higher to fund it, and documents seen by Reuters put the setup cost between 1.26 billion euros (1.41 billion dollars) and 1.81 billion euros, plus running costs.
The trigger was the autumn fill. German storage stood at 62 percent at the end of October, below the 70 percent target, drawing criticism from opposition parties and from Italy. Berlin’s defence is that supply options have changed since 2022: the country now buys through LNG terminals and through pipelines from Norway, routes that did not exist at scale when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered the last crisis. Industry reporting puts the November 1 fill at about 61 percent, the lowest start to winter since 2011, against an EU average near 75 percent.
Alongside the reserve, the government plans tighter gas market regulation, including mandatory seasonal stock keeping for gas utilities, closer monitoring of inventories by the network regulator, and measures to secure supplies to power plants and industrial sites, a ministry spokesperson told Reuters.
The decision lands in a European gas market already short of cushion. Qatar’s LNG loadings are running at roughly half of pre war levels, European inventories are below seasonal norms, and seasonal storage withdrawals are already underway. Germany is choosing to pay a visible levy for a guaranteed stock rather than rely on a forward curve that, this summer, gave traders no reason to fill.